We visited a quirky Colorado restaurant and indoor fantasy Mexican-style entertainment center called Casa Bonita in October.
The restaurant was decorated for Halloween at the time, and they even changed their outdoor marquee to say "Casa Boonita"!
Reservations are not easy to get at this very popular restaurant and entertainment center, and we felt fortunate to be able to celebrate our daughter-in-law's birthday together!
On the Casa Bonita Fun Facts page, they say:
"The Greatest Restaurant in the World!
A cultural institution in the Denver area since its opening in 1974, Casa Bonita, under new ownership, is proud to open with a refreshed look and feel, and a brand new culinary team. While maintaining the magical ability to transport guests back in time to 1970s Mexico, Casa Bonita provides an unmatched experience that includes live music, shows, games, and memories that will last a lifetime."
Inside, different facades and themed rooms are intended to invoke regional Mexican architectural styles: for example, Acapulco, Puerto Vallarta, and Guadalajara.
After dinner, one can go to Casa Bonita's theater and see a magic show!
It is also fun to travel on foot through the long, dark Black Bart's Cave and find his stash of gold, but beware of ghouls and detours along the way!
One can also buy tickets to play in the arcade, where you can win prizes!
Admission to the restaurant also enables guests to interact with roaming characters in costume, have their face painted, get a balloon animal creation, make a wish in the wishing well, buy souvenirs in the Mercado, listen to a mariachi band, and watch a puppet show.
The most exciting attraction in Casa Bonita is watching the periodic Cliff Diver Show!
Divers appear on the cliffs while music plays, and then they make a daring twisting dive into the water below!
A video of a cliff dive!
There are interesting display cases of Casa Bonita's 50-plus-year history memorabilia in one area of the restaurant.
The Casa Bonita Restaurant concept was originally founded in 1968 in Oklahoma City, OK, by entrepreneur Bill Waugh. It later expanded to Tulsa, OK, Little Rock, AR, Fort Worth, TX, as well as Lakewood, CO, but Colorado's Casa Bonita location is the only location still remaining in business.
In 2021, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of the popular animated satirical sitcom South Park, shown on Comedy Central, reached an agreement to purchase Casa Bonita’s Lakewood location, which had been closed since early 2020 due to the Covid pandemic and then bankruptcy.
Parker and Stone had many memories of going to Casa Bonita as children, and the restaurant meant a great deal to them. They had to invest many millions to refurbish the entire restaurant, and the story about all they faced to reopen Casa Bonita can be seen in the documentary called Casa Bonita Mi Amor.
The South Park character, Cartman. has his own corner in Casa Bonita, and on the day we visited, he was wearing his Halloween costume!
According to the Fun Facts Page:
" The iconic, pink Casa Bonita tower stands 85′ tall and is visible for miles. On top of the tower’s golden dome stands a statue of Cuauhtémoc (kwah-hoo-tem’-ok), the last Aztec Emperor.
The exterior of the building was repainted in 2022 and required over 400 gallons of custom-blended pink paint!"
We had a fun time at Casa Bonita--we visited a few times in the past and enjoyed seeing all the improvements on this visit after its refurbishment.
It is wonderful that such a fun, iconic place was saved for future generations to enjoy!
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28 comments:
That looks like a fun place to visit. So good that it was refurbished and continued in business.
That is such a fun restaurant! I love the décor and I can understand why it gets so busy. There is so much to see and do there.
Hello, Patricia
What a fun time, a restaurant and entertainment center together.
Sounds great, I like the decorations. I can not imagine an indoor cliff diver show, that is amazing. Have a great day and a happy week ahead.
...pretty in pink!
A wonderful Post again this week. Thank you for sharing at MosaicMonday 🌻
That sounds like quite a restaurant/entertainment space! I love that there is so much to do and see.
What an experience to enjoy Casa Bonita. I'm pretty sure our Colorado family friends took us to Casa Bonita in 1976 when we were driving through to Michigan. It a spot that is hard to forget.
We went to Colorado last summer and wanted to visit, since we'd seen it on South Park but were unaware you needed to book a table pretty far out so we never made it!
Quirky, fun and very popular.
I enjoyed seeing your photographs.
Have a good week.
All the best Jan
That looks like the most delightful place to spend your daughter-in-law's birthday! Loads of fun, bright color, good music and Mexican food. I know everyone had the best time!
Pat - what a fun story, and I join you in celebrating that an iconic place was saved and restored. If we get stuck in Denver (we fly through there A LOT), this will be on our list of places to go (if we can get in!)
So festive and a fun. Just the place for a birthday celebration.
-Soma
THis is so cool! Thanks for sharing! #TalkaboutitTuesday
Oh wow, Casa Bonita looks like an amazing place. I would love it!
What a fun place to celebrate a birthday!
www.chezmireillefashiontravelmom.com
Oh that looks like such a fun place to visit and to have dinner! Thanks for sharing!
I would love to see a magic show....Michelle
Wow! What a fun and unique place. I would love to go there!
This looks like a lot of fun 😁 Beautiful ❤️ photos. Thank you so much for sharing, and warm greetings from Montreal, Canada 😊 🇨🇦
This looks like a fun, family restaurant. I like the decor and it sounds like they are doing a good business. Thank you for linking up and have a great weekend!
Casa Bonita is PINK and has a fountain and dinner plus a magic show. The video of a cliff diver was awesome. Definitely a place to go to for fun!
Looks like fun time is had by all.
As you say in your post, Tulsa had a Casa Bonita. We never went to it and then it went out of business.
That looks like a great place to eat, and I love their Día de los Muertos decor. Blessings!
so bright n colourful!!!
What an intriguing restaurant! Wonderful that it was saved by people who remembered it from their youth. I am sure it was a great place to celebrate a birthday.
Very colourful.
Oh wow! That looks like so much fun. Neat.
Visiting today from Crazy Little Love Birds
Oh my goodness, thanks so much for sharing this at Thursday Favorite Things! I went there on a trip to Colorado in 1980. I have such great memories of it!
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