Our moms said we are going to Casa Bonita!   Exciting and we have never been there.   Moms have been there many times and now we can go.  Both our moms were teachers and this was a favorite place to bring students for lunch after visiting a museum or special performance.

Casa Bonita Restaurant in Denver, Colorado

Wow!  A big pink castle.   Entering the building, we follow the walkway.   Things look like Old Mexico.   Great decor.   Menus are available along the way.   We all order the beef deluxe dinner.   With this dinner we can get more of any item on our plate, whenever we want more.   We order, then continue along the walkway, get our tray, silverware and napkin.   Our very hot plate is placed on the tray, then our beverage is added; we continue along the path, and soon we are met by an employee that guides us to our table.   We are seated by the edge of the diving pool.   Diving pool in a restaurant?   Oh yes, this is Casa Bonita.   A waitress brings us beverage straws and chips and salsa.   We ask for our warm sopaipillas now also.

Lots of food for us. The raised red flag indicates we need our waitress.

This looks good.   These are sopaipillas.

Warm sopaipillas

Our moms love them.   After one taste, Zeb and Chanel are big sopaipilla fans also.  This is one of those restaurants that you don’t visit just for the food.   We think the food is fine.   It is not a small family run restaurant with the best green chili, but it is as good or better than Taco Bell.   And we bet you eat there.   Casa Bonita serves good food, but the entire experience is unique to Casa Bonita.   We have never been to any restaurant that has so much to see and there are so many places to explore here.   First let’s look at the pool.

Pool inside Casa Bonita. 30 foot waterfall here.

The waterfall, and one diving platform is 30 feet (9.1 m) high.   Frequently (about every 15 minutes) there will be a show above the pool, or a diver will perform for the guests.   The restaurant is similar to things you may see in Mexico, including the Acapulco cliff divers.   This man performed a dive where he twisted and turned before entering the water.

Diving into pool

We love water and we love watching the divers.  A gorilla stars in one of the short skits performed above the pool.

Short skit with gorilla.

Some skits result in one of the employees landing in the pool also.   We have eaten enough.   We all ordered extra tacos and lots of warm sopaipillas.   Honey on warm sopaipillas is delicious.   Now we will explore more of Casa Bonita.   This is where those addictive sopaipillas are made.

Where sopaipillas are made

Heading down the stairs, past the lower arcade (yes, there is another arcade on the upper level), we find the Quien Sabe Mine.

Entrance to Quien Sabe Mine dining room

Entering we discover another dining room resembling the inside of a mine.   The lights by each table offer plenty of light.

Table inside Quien Sabe Mine dining room

What a great dining room.   Leaving the mine, we soon enter this dining room with a fairly large stage.

A stage for entertainment while dining

Plenty of seating for diners here.   Each area has been decorated differently.   And very carefully to give a varied experience.   You could return and eat in a different room and have a different experience.   You can order the deluxe, all you can eat, dinner as we did, order other Mexican platters, try a salad, chile rellenos or fajitas.   American chicken fried steak or fried chicken breast is available, and also a kids menu.   We visited the dining room decorated as a cavern.   The stalagmites and stalactites were very realistic.   Here is a jail.

A Mexican jail

Moms are putting us in jail??

Zeb and Chanel are in jail??

But mom…   It is OK.   They got us out of jail.   Back up the stairs, past our dining area by the pool, into another room to the stage for the puppet show.

Stage for puppet show

Maybe we are performing here?   The stadium style seating is nice, but we are sitting under a gorilla to watch the puppet show?

Watching puppet show under a gorilla

There is another wall with a huge head of rock, but only one eye.   Rather close we discovered Black Bart’s Hideout.

Entrance to Black Bart’s Hideout

This is a favorite with guests.   We liked it also.   Next we wandered behind the waterfall that goes into the pool.   There are even tables for eating behind the waterfall.    This balcony reminds us of some seen in Mexico.

Mexican balcony. Another great dining location

Another great place to eat.   Up the stairs, we discovered more dining rooms and a different decor.   So many choices for dining here.   This restaurant can seat 1,100 guests at any time.   And with multiple dining rooms, you don’t feel crowded.   As we head toward the exit, we loved this stack of small plates.

We loved this stack of plates. Red flag is up. Zeb and Chanel want more sopaipillas.

We just had to smile seeing them.   Zeb and Chanel raised the flag; more sopaipillas, please??  But moms said no, time to go.   But, maybe just a quick look through the gift shop.   Some of my duck relatives live here.

Some relatives at Casa Bonita

There is so much more to see at Casa Bonita.   Strolling musicians, great mariachis entertain as you dine. Perhaps watch a magic show.  You can have a picture drawn, try the arcade games, see what the fortune telling machine predicts for you and explore even more areas of this restaurant.   Casa Bonita opened in Lakewood, Colorado in 1974 and has been entertaining visitors since. We had a wonderful afternoon at Casa Bonita.   We hope you visit, eat, explore and enjoy some time here also.