A Colorado Restaurant Made Famous On South Park Has Cliff Divers And Neon Palm Trees

If you're someone who likes to travel to places that are made famous on TV (think adding Nantucket to your travel wish list after watching "The Perfect Couple"), you might be surprised to find out that even some animated shows feature destinations you can visit. In this case, it's the Mexican-themed Casa Bonita restaurant in Denver, which was featured as Cartman's "favorite place in the whole world" in an episode of "South Park," via IMDB.

This very real restaurant is known for its fun, kitsch atmosphere where you dine amidst fake lava rocks, palm trees, and waterfalls, and where performers bravely dive off of platforms into a tiny pool. It's in Lakewood, a suburb of Denver about a 45-minute drive from the Denver airport. Casa Bonita is a massive restaurant at more than 50,000 square feet, and its pink and white stucco facade, featuring an 85-foot-tall tower, makes it hard to miss. While Casa Bonita may have gained more national recognition by being featured in "South Park," it's actually been around since the mid 1970s. It was originally one of four Casa Bonita restaurants all started around the same period. It's now the only one left, so it's like dining in a piece of history.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of "South Park," actually bought the restaurant after it closed during the pandemic. In 2024, the theme park-esque Mexican restaurant reopened to the public after a multi-million dollar renovation.  There's even a documentary called "¡Casa Bonita, Mi Amor!" about the renovation and the restaurant's history streaming on Paramount+. 

The food at Casa Bonita didn't have the greatest reputation in the years before Trey Parker and Matt Stone bought it, so they prioritized making it a good place to eat, instead of just a fun place to visit that happened to serve food. Chef Dana Rodriguez, who's been a semi-finalist for a James Beard Foundation Award multiple times, was brought in to help revamp the menu. There's now a focus on fresh food made in house, and you can get dishes like enchiladas, carnitas nachos, and spiced chocolate flan.

To get a table at Casa Bonita, reservations via their website are required. The booking website was flooded with hopeful diners after its reopening in fall 2024, a problem Casa Bonita was still working to resolve at the time of this writing. If you do score a table and want the best views of the cliff-diving show (which takes place every 20 minutes), you'll need to book the Premium Dining package at $44.99. This package also means you get to order from a server at your table instead of having to wait in line. Standard Dining is a bit cheaper; for a weekday lunch it's $29.99 for adults and $19.99 for kids from 3 to 12 years old; any other time, it's $39.99 for adults and $24.99 for kids. It does mean you'll have to go through the cafeteria style line for your food, and it places you farther away from the cliff-diving action. But you will still be in a themed area (options, according to the reservations website, include the Mines or the Rose Garden.)

With all entry fees, you get chips and salsa, a drink (non-alcoholic), an entree, and two of their famous sopapillas. Plus, you can always order more. For those wanting something stronger than soda, the bar has yummy craft cocktails, including, of course, some great margaritas.

From the food to the interior, the overall goal for the Casa Bonita renovation was to "change nothing, improve everything," according to 9News. So for those people who grew up visiting Casa Bonita, you still get the same over-the-top jungle-y vibe complete with 30-foot-waterfall, but everything's updated and safer, from the kitchen equipment to the cliff diving.

Coming here is more than just dinner and a show; it's a full-on immersive experience. They have a game room, the spooky Black Bart's Cave experience, mariachi bands, a puppet show, fortune telling, face painting, and more. There is also a nod to its "South Park" fame in the form of a Cartman statue seated at a table. It's definitely a kid-friendly destination, but Matt Stone and Trey Parker wanted to make sure that it would be appealing for the entire family. "The number one customer is probably a six-year-old who's hopefully going to think this place is great," Stone told 5280. "But we want the parents to come and have a nice drink and like the fact that the place doesn't smell like chlorine anymore."

If watching the cliff divers gets you inspired to embrace your adventurous side, visit America's only mountaintop amusement park while you're in Colorado; it's about a 2 hour 45 minute drive from Casa Bonita. For something a bit closer (about a 45-minute drive), Castle Rock, between Denver and Colorado Springs, is full of outdoor adventure thrills.