Review: Pioneer Spa, Norwalk

Amenities: 3.5/5 

Cruisiness: 3.5/5 

Price: $25

Pros: Clean, lots of parking, priced fairly decently, decent coed area
Cons: Small, limited towels, sauna and steam can get very hot.

A new spa review! Did you miss me?

I'd heard of Pioneer for years, but just never made my way to Norwalk until recently. 

The spa is in a strip mall on Pioneer Blvd. It's a little confusing to get into the parking lot if you're heading north on Pioneer from the 91 Freeway. It's on the northwest corner of Pioneer and 166th, so if you're going north you have to turn left onto 166th and then IMMEDIATELY turn right into the driveway. The driveway is practically right at the corner. If you're driving south on Pioneer, there's a direct entrance. 

A lot of the parking spaces in the main area of the mall are 1-hour parking (although I'm not sure they actually enforce it; on my first visit I parked in one of those spaces and had no problem) and the lot can be crowded, but if you keep driving to the back there's a big lot with plenty of parking and no time limit.

The spa entrance can be found in the building to the south, closest to 166th Street. There's an indoor mall area with a few restaurants and other businesses, and the spa is to the right. I got there and paid my $25. If you want to go into the coed area, make sure you request shorts and t-shirt if he doesn't actually give them to you; one of my visits I wasn't given the uniform and I forgot to ask. Also got three small towels... those are the only towels you get, although on my first visit a few months earlier, I remembered there being unlimited towels in the locker room, so I guess their policy changed in the last few months. I also thought I remembered it being open 24 hours before, but now their hours are 8:30am-10:00pm.

Once I got my key, I put my shoes in the shoe cubby (the first time I was there the attendant made sure I knew to put my shoes there) and entered the locker room. The locker room isn't large. It's basically a square: one wall is basically all lockers, one wall is half lockers and then a hallway to the jimjilbang (coed area) and sleeping room, one wall is the sinks, and the 4th wall is the entrance to the wet area, the hallway to the massage rooms and restroom, and the water dispenser. There is no sign pointing you to the restroom... my first time there I had to figure out that it was down the hall to the massage rooms. There's also a fairly dark TV room with recliners down that hall.

When you enter the wet area, going clockwise from your left, you have the scrub area, the steam room, the dry sauna, the hot pool, the cold pool, and the showers. There are 4 plastic chairs placed around the wet area. 

In one alcove there are six standing showers and in a separate alcove I think 6 seated showers. There is a rack outside the showers with toothbrushes and scrub towels. The showers were fine, although I'm not a big fan of bar soap in a communal shower. 

The hot tub is more shallow than normal for some reason. So you have to slouch to get totally in the water. I do appreciate, though, that the rim around the edge of the hot tub is painted with some smooth paint which makes it so it's not too uncomfortable to rest your head on it. And in my visits I noticed that the temperature of the hot tub varied. It definitely felt hotter the third visit than it did the second visit. The jets on the hot tub are operated by a 5-minute timer (the dial is between the dry sauna and steam room) and it's really annoying if you want to stay in there longer than 5 minutes. Kind of like Spa Palace was before they swapped theirs out for longer timers.

The cold pool felt pretty cold to me, but I don't really like cold that much so I didn't get in past my knees.

The steam room also has a dial timer, next to the steam room's door. The steam room is pretty small (it's crowded with 6 people), and when the steam is going, the steam jets are at floor level, which means if you're sitting on the lower-level bench, your feet and legs are going to get very hot. The rest of the steam room also gets very hot, almost unbearable, if the steam is on for any appreciable amount of time. 

The dry sauna's temperature fluctuated too, but not as drastically as the steam room in that it was usually bearable. The dry sauna is also small, maybe big enough for 6 or 7 at most. My biggest issue with the sauna is that sometimes, usually when someone opened the door when coming or going, I got a whiff of a musty smell in the sauna. It reminded me of a gym sauna almost. I didn't notice it most of the time, again, unless there was a breeze caused by the door opening and closing.

One thing I noticed about the wet area was that they were constantly cleaning. Like, I've never seen any spa being cleaned as much as this one was. 

The sleeping room is off the hallway to the jimjilbang, and although there's a sign in the locker room saying "CLOTHING REQUIRED BEYOND THIS POINT" if you go down that hallway, you don't need to be wearing clothes if you're just going to the sleeping room.

The jimjilbang is small but pretty nice, actually, although I'm not sure if the restaurant was actually open. There are several saunas, including a clay ball room and a salt rock room, and there's a cold room (which wasn't super cold, but cold enough to cool me down.)

As far as cruising goes, in my experience it just really depends on the day. I went one day and it was super cruisy, as if pretty much everyone there was looking to play... The crowd seemed like it was mostly Latino with a few Asians and white guys.  I went exactly one week later (same day of the week, same time) and it felt like a much smaller number of people there to play, mostly Asians and a few white and Latino (and I think a Black guy was there too).  And the fact that the men's wet area is pretty small means that if there's a significant number of people not wanting to play, you're not going to get a chance to play (not to mention the constant cleaning going on). Also, in my latest visit, there was a father with a child there for part of the time, although I think he just stuck to the pools and the jimjilbang.

However, the sleeping room (I think they actually call it the "Relax Room") seems to be where a lot of stuff happens. It's pretty much pitch dark in there when the door is totally closed so it's pretty easy to not get discovered since you can stop what you're doing if someone comes in before their eyes adjust to the darkness. 

As a side note, there are signs around the place warning of "Inappropriate activity". The phrasing on the sign says something like "If a customer complains, you will be kicked out and banned." Which I thought was interesting because if you think about exactly what it says, they're not saying that you'll be kicked out if staff catches you, only if a customer complains. I'm not sure if that interpretation was intentional or not, but it was definitely something I noticed. 

Anyway, if you happen to be in or near Norwalk or Cerritos and have the urge to go to a spa, this one isn't too bad. 

Pioneer Spa & Sauna

16511 Pioneer Blvd suite 108, 

Norwalk, CA 90650