Pa. spa experience is sealed with a Kiss

HERSHEY, Pa. -- I've never been given so many kisses in my life -- or, I should say, Kisses. It started with the turn-down service at the Hotel Hershey, which included a presentation of five Hershey's Kisses lined up just so, with a note reading "Sweet Dreams." But of course.

The Kisses continued, in bowls strategically placed about this 1930s Mediterranean-style, four-star hotel, modeled after founder Milton Hershey's High Point Mansion. (The irony. Surely this is the only four-star hotel to dole out Hershey's chocolate instead of, say, Godiva or Teuscher.)

The ultimate Kiss, however, turned out to be me. This, after my pleasant Hershey Spa attendant, Maria, brushed me all over (OK, almost all over) with cocoa-scented "moor mud" (a peat preparation) and wrapped me in a shiny silver thermal blanket for my chocolate fondue wrap.

Truth be told, you couldn't see the silver lining because she then placed a wool blanket on top of my bundle. Still, I felt like a Kiss as my mind drifted aimlessly for 20 sweet minutes while the heat and moisture soaked into my winter-dry skin. All I needed was some way to scratch the itch on my nose.

For the rinse-off, Maria placed a seven-headed Vichy "rainbar" over the length of my body, conjuring thoughts of a car wash. It got almost all the mud off my body, which, by the way, was never exposed in any immodest way, thanks to Maria's expert sheet and towel tricks. No clients have asked her if they could be in their birthday suits, she said. "Not here in central Pennsylvania. It's not like California."

The spa at the Hotel Hershey is not in the least kitschy, but it does, naturally, play up what made the company famous.

"Chocolate is the twist, of course," said Jennifer Wayland-Smith, who has been director since the spa opened three years ago. "When we were planning the spa, we wondered, `How can we incorporate chocolate and maintain the integrity of spa services?' "

Wayland-Smith and a consultant came up with a series of "signature chocolate services," not to be confused with "edible chocolate services." They include the fondue wrap (60 minutes, $100); chocolate mud hydrotherapy (25 minutes, $55), a jet bath of moor mud and essence of cocoa; and a chocolate bean polish (30 minutes, $60), an exfoliation by cocoa bean husks. As part of a "chocolate immersion," I had the bean polish before my wrap.

Other scrub options are a strawberry parfait and a peppermint salt scrub. When the latter is mixed with the wrap, you've got a York Peppermint Pattie, trademark of the Hershey Foods Corp., of course.

It was while testing cocoa treatments in her bathtub at home that Wayland-Smith helped develop what has become the spa's most popular feature and the only one that uses actual chocolate: the whipped cocoa bath (25 minutes, $45). I felt compelled to take a sip, I mean dip. The bath itself -- like sitting in very watered-down frothy hot chocolate -- didn't smell enough like cocoa to me. But the comfortable tub with perfectly placed pillows and jet streams and the dim candlelit room made up for any olfactory deprivation.

When my allotted time was up and the uncaring digital timer had deactivated the jet streams, my attendant, Jamie, arrived at the curtained-off space to say politely, "Diane, if you want to hop out now, and then you can take a shower." I was tempted to respond cheerfully, "Oh, no, thanks. I'll just stay a bit longer."

If the idea of chocolate treatments doesn't appeal to you (but why wouldn't it?), you're not alone.

"Some spa purists pooh-pooh it," Wayland-Smith allowed. "But for many people, it takes that nervous edge off because it's going to be fun." She figures that's one reason why a good portion of last year's 20,000 customers were first-time spa visitors.

There are plenty of options for those not indulging in chocolate, such as rose petal soaks, sea salt scrubs, and the strawberry or peppermint treatments without the fondue wrap. The spa also offers the usual massages and facials, and has a nail and hair salon. It sells many of the products it uses, including whipped cocoa bath for do-it-yourselfers. (The recipe calls for a mix of the cocoa bath foaming product with cocoa powder and nonfat dry milk.)

I picked up a small bottle of the cocoa body oil, and when I joked that it was rather small for its bag, the receptionist said, "You're right. Let's fill it out." I unthinkingly expected more tissue paper. Instead, he went through a door and came back with my bag now plump with Kisses.

The spa has been so popular that it is planning to almost double in size by the Christmas holiday season, Wayland-Smith said. Bulldozers were smashing through frozen ground the day I visited, making the Quiet Room anything but. The room is a cozy waiting area patterned after Milton Hershey's library, where men and women sit silently and a bit self-consciously, it seemed, in their spa-issued robes and plastic sandals.

What to do besides spa treatments? If you're staying at the hotel and it's still winter, you can warm yourself in the beautifully situated indoor pool or visit the fitness center. In summer, golf, gardens, strolling, cycling, and an outdoor pool are offered. The popular amusement area Hersheypark reopens for the season in spring. The company's official visitors center, Hershey's Chocolate World, and the separate Hershey Museum are open year-round.

The comfortably worn museum displays art and artifacts from the Hershey family collections, the company, factory, and even town neighborhoods. Don't miss Kisstory, a fascinating timeline exhibit, mostly in advertisements, of Hershey's Kisses, from their birth in 1907 to the present.

Chocolate World, which has a 3-D movie and simulated factory tour that are so outdated they qualify as charmingly retro, is about to burst into the 21st century this spring with Hershey's Factory Works Experience, a kind of "Willy Wonka" extravaganza with a cafe, do-it-yourself chocolate assortments, and prancing bakers, to be called "Hersheyizers." The store at Chocolate World, by the way, is a thrilling Hershey supermarket.

For more sophisticated palates, the hotel's upscale Circular Dining Room is a grand space with stunning partial-stained-glass windows that look over gardens and lawns and onto hills and valleys. The day I visited, the landscape was white with several inches of snow. . . . Or was that white chocolate?

Diane Daniel can be reached by e-mail at ddaniel@globe.com.