For many a cruise holiday is a time to relax, unwind, and leave your troubles on land. Cruise lines have evolved over the years, and Carnival Vista – the line’s newest, largest and most innovative ship – debuted earlier this month in Europe, and is up there with the elite featuring a luxurious two-level Cloud 9 Spa.

Carnival Vista

The Cloud 9 Spa boasts an array of amenities, such as Carnival’s first infrared sauna and Hammam Chamber, as well as special “experience showers” that provide a soothing fragrance element, a large heated whirlpool, four steam chambers and a high-tech indoor cycling studio.

Relax in the thermal suite

Exclusive to Carnival Vista is the Infrared Heat Chamber.  The chamber’s heating system is built into the walls with 80 percent of the heat gently warming the body and the remaining 20 percent of infrared heat released into the air, providing cooler, more consistent temperatures than traditional saunas.

Much has been made of the health benefits of sauna bathing. With good reason. Physically, nothing is more reviving than a deep, healthy sweat every day. Pressure fades. Muscles wind down. Mentally, we appear relaxed, invigorated and ready for whatever the day may bring.

Another Carnival Vista exclusive is the Hammam Chamber, developed during the Ottoman Empire as a place of restoration, meditation and inner peace. The objective is both physical and spiritual cleansing, along with releasing of joints and muscles by ladling warm water over the body to slowly increase temperature to approximately 113 degrees F (45° C).

Carnival Vista’s Cloud 9 Spa also features an extravagant Thermal Suite, which offers intensive relaxation and a new sensory experience provided through individually designed heat therapy rooms that purify, tone and refine the body using interchanging dry and wet heat chambers. The thermal suite is an exclusive facility within the spa offering different areas for specific therapeutic needs.

The Steam Chamber with Aroma Steam and Aromatic Grotto is a small, intimate chamber where high humidity and radiant heat create a damp, warm climate that softly but meticulously cleanses the skin and respiratory tract with herbal steam featuring sweet aromas such as cinnamon, orange or apple.

The Dry Heat Chamber, or Laconium, is a large dry heat bath/sauna-like chamber where circulation is roused, hastening and activating the body’s own defences, while decreasing stress.

View Cloud 9 Spa services and treatments

Additional Cloud 9 Spa amenities include treatment rooms for European-style massages and facials, two saunas (men/women), two locker rooms (men/women), a post-treatment relaxation room where guests can lounge, enjoy herbal tea and relish the sensation of pure relaxation and a VIP treatment room with whirlpool.

As part of the Cloud 9 Spa located forward on decks 12 and 14, Carnival Vista features 98 spa staterooms and six suites. Guests in these accommodations have convenient access to the spa and are eligible for exclusive spa packages, discounts and priority spa appointments. These staterooms and suites have additional in-room, spa-related amenities and décor different than other accommodations, in harmony with the soothing and relaxing theme of the Cloud 9 Spa.