Amenities: 4/5
Cruisiness: 3/5
Price: $25
Pros: Very clean, unlimited small towels, free snacks (!!!)
Cons: Small, kinda far from central LA, more expensive than most spas
I've been meaning to check out this spa for a while, but I'm just never in the Hacienda Heights area (unless I'm passing through to get somewhere else) so it's usually kind of inconvenient for me. But I finally had time a few days ago, so I went to check it out.
I walked in, paid my entry, and was told by the woman at the counter to remove my shoes and place them on the shelf next to the men's spa entrance. I usually like to put my shoes in my locker, but I felt like it wasn't an option with her staring over my shoulder, so I complied.
I walked into the men's spa and you're immediately in the TV room with recliners. There were two or three guys in the recliners at any given time while I was there. The lights were a little dim, but not too much. The lockers were on the far side of the recliner area. The locker "room" was tiny, two rows of lockers facing each other. The entire locker area was smaller than my bathroom. There's also a heated-floor sleeping room off the recliner area with a really awkward step up to get into it. But best of all, there's a full snack bar in there: nuts, crackers, fresh fruit and even instant ramen there for the taking. Never seen anything like that at any other Korean spa.
The spa is decorated in stone, and there are those flickering LED "candles" everywhere. It was a nice touch, even though there were so many that it was leaning more toward being tacky. Not too bad though.
Inside the spa, there are four upright showers, three right inside the door and a fourth one beyond the cold pool. There are also several seated showers, maybe six of them but I really didn't look too closely at them to get an accurate count. At the far end of the seated showers was the body scrub table... it's in full view of the seated showers and the hot pool, but otherwise not really visible from the rest of the spa.
The warm pool is the largest pool, could maybe accommodate 6 or 7 guys, with a slightly smaller hot pool and a cold pool. The warm pool was a great temperature... in my opinion, just about perfect for relaxing. The hot pool was too hot for me to stay in too long.
There is also a very small steam room and very small sauna down a little hallway... both would be crowded with three people in them. The steam in the steam room is controlled by a 5-minute dial timer outside of the steam room itself, which is a mixed blessing: it's nice to be able to have complete control over the steam, but having to exit the steam room every few minutes can get annoying.
When I was there (on a Saturday afternoon), the clientele was probably 50/50 Asian and Latino. And me. (There were probably no more than 6 or 7 customers total at any one time while I was there) Most of the Latin guys seemed to be looking to play, as did one of the Asian guys. The only places to really play are the steam room and sauna, but even then it's difficult... They have full windows into the hallway, so there's not really any privacy, even in the steam room (it doesn't go far enough back for the steam to completely obscure you). But you can usually tell if someone is heading down the hallway, so you might get a short warning before someone stumbles onto you. But if the place is at all busy, it might not be the best place to play.
The spa was really nice though, definitely my favorite spa in the San Gabriel Valley.
Royal Health Spa
1020 S Hacienda Blvd
Hacienda Heights, CA 91745
(cross street of Hacienda Blvd & Gale Ave)
http://www.royalhealthspa.net/