With Casa Bonita’s opening date announcement any day now, The Denver Gazette asked our social media followers to share their fondest memories over the years from the most iconic Mexican restaurant in metro Denver.

Here are some of our favorite responses:

@astrosnat on Instagram: My mom would always take me! We’d spend our lunch and early afternoon there, waiting for one of the seats by the waterfall. I’d get $10 for the arcade and then we would go to Lake Side after for the rest of the night 🙂 My mom is a Denver local, and she loved showing me what she grew up with when she went to East High School.

u/ideit on Reddit: My friends and I were standing on a bridge in Casa Bonita. We look at the schedule, and right now, it just says “Gorilla.” Just one word. We look around and can’t see any Gorillas. What even does that mean?

Then a voice from behind us, “Excuse me, are you looking for something?” We turn around, and there’s a girl standing next to someone in a Gorilla costume jumping around and making Gorilla sounds at us. It scared the s*** out of us.

5/7 would recommend.

u/AsaTJ on Reddit: Took my ex’s mother who had recently moved here from California there specifically because we knew she would hate it. She did. 11/10.

@my3lovesforlife on Instagram: I’m 63 now, but when I was 16/17, I was a diver and our family acquainted Casa Bonita often as there were 10 kids and it was cheap as well as entertaining. I wanted to apply for a diving job there, however at the time they wouldn’t accept females. 🤷‍♀️

u/l06ic on Reddit: Many years ago, I was a diver at Casa Bonita. For an 18 year old kid, $17/hr was great money. Especially back in the nineteen hundred and nineties. I just hope the food is better than it used to be.

@chrismyers719 on Instagram: When I was around 12 some kid was hiding under the bridge in black Barts cave scaring people by reaching up and grabbing their legs… I just stomped on his fingers… 😅🫣🤷‍♂️

@marensunyhuber on Instagram: When my glamour girl mother first moved to Denver in the 80s, she was told that she just had to go this beautiful and fancy restaurant by a family friend in small town North Dakota. So, she and my grandmother got dressed to the nines, hair, and makeup and everything and went to Casa Bonita. Needless to say, they were very surprised and definitely amused.

@kalikamae on Instagram: We would stop at Casa Bonita every year when we drove out from the midwest for our family ski trips! special kick off to see the cliff divers before heading up to the mountains!

@sadfelix on Instagram: I definitely remember putting up a tiny flag at our table to signal to the server that we were ready for another “endless” plate of Mexican food. Also, the cliff divers and Bart’s Cave…It was just like South Park promised! 😂😂

u/Homers_Harp on Reddit: I sure hope they don’t get “creative” and make too many changes. One of the great joys in life is taking people for the first time.

@lauras_snaps on Instagram: The rule as a child was we could only go to Casa Bonita for a birthday every 3 years because the food was so….superb 🫣 but dang we loved those cliff divers!! Excited to celebrate an adult birthday here with the revamp 🙌

@revshawna on Instagram: As a kid we would always go here when visiting my grandma in Golden. My brother and I loved the arcade and the ability to run around and explore all the different places to view the cliff divers. I brought my own kids there who were also enchanted by it. As an adult I did wonder if the place had become run-down or if it was always that way. I remember playing with the chains that marked where we stood in the long line to get in and taking pictures over the years next to the fountain. I can’t wait to see it totally restored!

@tammycockrellrealtor on Instagram: My brother & I loved Black Bart’s Cave, the old fashioned pictures in the jail cell, the ghostly face at the bottom of the wishing well, the puppet shows and getting a ‘prize’ from the treasure chest on the way out.

u/Sqorck on Reddit: Right before it closed my partner and I made a mini documentary about our friend who is obsessed with it, they were celebrating their 300th visit and had a huge party there. This is the group that tried to buy Casa Bonita before Matt and Trey. The video also features the professor of fun David Thomas that was quoted as the “Casa Bonita is better than Meow Wolf” guy. In the process we also met one of the rock sculptors that helped build the original waterfall. It’s amazing how many people connect so deeply to that place.

u/le_trout on Reddit: The one time I went, I stood in a line which reminded me of the humidity and velvet rope of Pirates of the Carribean at Disneyland. However, rather than the excitement that was building for Pirates, I watched videos on TVs not unlike the one in my 7th grade Biology class. I’m certain the videos had not been updated since 1986 at the latest, but they all seemed to want me to like where I was really really badly.

I don’t know what exactly it was that triggered it between my first sight of the food and the twenty minutes of those videos I watched waiting in line, but I distinctly remember a disgusting feeling, apologizing to who I was with at the time, and leaving through an exit door before I ever actually made it to the full experience.