Setting out the lanterns each evening takes about twenty minutes, done by whoever is closing the outdoor pools that night. There’s no fixed pattern — the lanterns are simply released from the edge and left to drift, which means the pool looks slightly different every single night.
We get more written feedback about this hour than about any ritual with a name and a fixed price attached to it, which is part of why it stays deliberately undersold — it isn’t a bookable line item so much as something that happens to the Cedar Pool once the sun is down.
Guests are asked to keep voices low during lantern hour. It’s the one rule at Thermae we enforce without exception.