view of Antarctica from a heated ceramic chair in the thermal suite

Like all ships on major cruise lines, Holland America Oosterdam has a spa and fitness center. Equipment at the gym is generally free to use. Some of the classes there have a cost and others are free. Personal trainers are also available for a fee.

gym

Nothing is free at the spa other than quick sample massages and boarding day tours, unless you count the sauna as part of the spa. There is a sauna that is free for anyone to use at the end of the hallway between the pool area and the spa desk closest to the pool end. It’s not shown on the deck plan so a lot of passengers probably never even know it is there. Anything else at the spa is generally on the pricey side whether products or services.

beauty salon

The beauty salon offers haircuts and styling as well as manicures and pedicures. Spa treatments cover a wide range of massage options as well as some other treatments like facials, acupuncture, minor medi-spa services, and tooth whitening. There are even facials for men and beard trimming as well as haircuts.

massage treatment room

I hadn’t really planned on having a massage on the Oosterdam, but we had $350 in use-it-or-lose-it onboard credit and pre-paid gratuities so we would not use any of the credit for them. We took the spa tour on boarding day, which included a sample hot rocks massage. When the girl who did our tour found out we had already booked the thermal suite she said she would give a 20% discount for the hot rocks massage. I’d always thought it might be a nice one and since we had all that credit plus the offer of a discount I booked it for a sea day later in the cruise. It seemed to be an offer just from the one masseuse as nobody has ever mentioned that discount on previous cruises and the people at the spa desk didn’t seem to know about it.

hot rocks

Parts of the massage were good, but some of it was rougher than what I prefer. The rocks didn’t always stay hot for very long and much of the massage was done without them. Over all I prefer a nice gentle Swedish massage. This was also the first time after a massage on Holland America that the masseuse tried to sell me something – in this case a lotion and an oil that cost over $60 each. It’s better when they don’t try to sell you stuff. You get all relaxed during the massage and then if they try to sell you stuff it breaks the peaceful mood. They offer a discount over the initially quoted price, but still way too much money for what you get.

loungers by the thermal suite pool

The spa also has a thermal suite for which only 40 passes are sold passes for the duration of the cruise. Other people can buy day passes from the spa onboard when available. It’s expensive, but you get to use the hydropool and heated ceramic chairs. There’s also steam rooms and aromatherapy. It’s nice to have a place to go and relax away from the crowd at the Lido pool. On warm-weather cruises there are often loungers to be found in quieter areas of the outside decks, but when cruising to Antarctica outside decks aren’t generally where people want to sit and relax. The Lido pool has a sliding cover so it can be inside or outside depending on the weather, but the loungers by the spa’s hydrotherapy pool are always indoors.

heated ceramic chairs

The thermal suite has 6 heated ceramic chairs as is standard on all of the Holland America ships we’ve sailed on. One always seems not to work regardless of what ship it is and this one was no exception. One of the steam rooms was also out of order, but there’s not usually a lot of people wanting to go in there at the same time so that’s not as bad as the much more popular chair not working. Or at least we thought it wasn’t working as did everyone else in the thermal suite on this cruise. Later on a different cruise one of the spa workers told me that they keep one chair cold so that if anyone gets too hot they can go lay on that one to cool off. Nobody ever does that though so they are just wasting a chair someone would use if it was kept hot. Heated ceramic chairs are nice, cold ones miserable, and everyone I’ve ever met in the thermal suite on any of their ships thinks that cold chair doesn’t work just as we had thought for many years.

hydropool

The hydropool had a new addition of a chair lift for people who can’t get in and out on their own, but I never saw anyone use it. All of the ship’s pools had them, not just the one in the thermal suite. There are jets around the sides of the pool, a shower sort of thing for shoulder water massages, a metal circle of big bubbles, and a rack where people can sit in bubbles.

water volcano in the spa pool

Usually the bubbles come up evenly across the rack, but this one had a volcano of water on one end and next to nothing on the other. Later in the cruise a smaller volcano developed near the middle of the rack. That was the goldilocks zone to me. There were a few people that liked the big volcano and occasionally someone even sat at the dead end, but most preferred the middle area either between the water volcanos or in the smaller one.

penguins on the counter at the spa check-in desk

Sometimes there were other people using the thermal suite while I was there, but other times I had it to myself. Early morning seemed to be a good time to find it empty or nearly so. Also around lunchtime, late evenings, or when you get back to the ship early on a port day when a lot of people are still out and about.

hydropool room decor

We enjoy the thermal suite more than specific spa treatments because you can use it any time during open hours from 8am to 10pm throughout the entire cruise rather than a one time thing like massages and other treatments. They do give discounts for booking additional treatments when you have more than one, but it’s still expensive.

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