Scoring Casa Bonita Reservations Is Ticketmaster-Levels of Frustrating

Casa Bonita just might be the most famous restaurant on the planet right now, thanks to the South Park episode that made it look like a pink paradise on Earth, as well as the upcoming, critically acclaimed documentary, which chronicles Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s Kitchen Nightmares-esque efforts to restore the tragically shuttered Colorado institution. 

The famed Mexican eatery re-opened its doors back in 2023, but it’s technically been in a “beta-testing” phase this whole time, meaning that those wanting to wolf down tacos while watching cliff divers had to try and score an invite via a lottery system, in which names were randomly selected from a lengthy waitlist. Kind of like scoring a golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, but without all of the child endangerment. 

But it was recently announced that reservations would finally be made available to the public beginning today, Monday, September 16th.

So far, not everybody’s happy. While the reservations won’t be available until 3 p.m. Mountain Time for the general public, earlier this morning, Casa Bonita’s “Founders Club” members were given priority access to book tables. Unfortunately, some prospective diners found themselves in a virtual lineup behind more than 50,000 others.

Casa Bonita ended up having to cut off the queue after selling out all of their priority reservations, understandably frustrating those who had been waiting for more than two hours.

Somehow securing reservations to this Colorado novelty restaurant has become as difficult as landing tickets to Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour, or the Oasis reunion shows, or, well, literally any event being ticketed by Ticketmaster, I guess.

Part of the reason why the quest for reservations remains so competitive is because Casa Bonita is only offering them for October and November, meaning that there’s a limited number of spaces available. But obviously the biggest problem is that the demand for reservations vastly outnumbers the number of available spots, which isn’t all that surprising, considering that, back in March, head chef Dana “Loca” Rodriguez estimated that between “400,000 to 600,000 people” were still on the waitlist. Considering that Parker and Stone have reportedly sunk $40 million into this project, they’ll need as many diners as they can get just to break even. 

Seeing as the Founders Club members likely only account for a fraction of those looking for reservations, you can expect the public release to be even more competitive and/or tedious. If you’re unable to snag a reservation for yourself, you can always check out the documentary when it hits theaters later this month — or try and recreate the experience by bringing a bag of Taco Bell takeout to your local indoor swimming pool.

You (yes, you) should follow JM on Twitter (if it still exists by the time you’re reading this).