Trey Parker and Matt Stone Finally Announce Casa Bonita’s Imminent Grand Opening
More than four years after Casa Bonita closed its doors due to a global pandemic, crumbling infrastructure and a collapsing financial situation, new owners Trey Parker and Matt Stone are finally opening the massively renovated restaurant to the general public.
On September 23, 2021, the South Park creators and Casa Bonita superfans finalized a $3.1 million acquisition of the struggling dinner entertainment megaplex in Lakewood, Colorado, almost two decades after they turned Casa Bonita into a global sensation with a classic South Park episode named for and featuring the suburban Denver restaurant. Over the past three years, Parker and Stone have poured over $40 million into an extensive renovation project that transformed the towering, pink, probably-OSHA-violating complex from a death trap into a tourist destination that has garnered rave reviews in its extended soft-opening phase.
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Then, this past Sunday, Parker and Stone revealed to the Denver Post that they plan to open Casa Bonita’s doors to the general public on October 1st, saying of protracted, pre-opening and infamously exclusive dinner service stage that has left South Park anxiously awaiting their turn at the top of the waitlist, “We thought we needed a couple weeks to figure that out — and we needed a solid year.”
Simultaneous with the grand opening announcement, Casa Bonita sent out an email titled “An Exciting Update From Casa Bonita” to the 600,000-plus members of the Casa Bonita reservation waitlist informing the faithful that the “Mexican restaurant Disneyland” (as described by Parker in the upcoming documentary ¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!) is launching an exclusive society for early converts called “The Founders Club.” The members-only association will offer anyone who put their name on the waitlist before the grand opening announcement access to priority reservations (starting September 16th) and a 10-percent discount at “El Mercado,” Casa Bonita’s official merch store.
Parker and Stone admitted to the Denver Post that the process of rehabilitating their childhood obsession that had fallen into dangerous disrepair was a vastly more strenuous and expensive endeavor than they had predicted, comparing it to their past successful side projects like the critically acclaimed stage musical The Book of Mormon. “It’s like putting on a Broadway show that’s also a restaurant,” Parker said of running Casa Bonita, noting that getting his current fixation ready for the public was “way more difficult” than winning nine Tony Awards.
“In some ways, it was — we’re restoring something, so you go, ‘Okay, there is a form and a template,’ but it was less of a template than we thought,” Stone said of the frustrating renovation process. “Theater is a well-worn art form, and Casa Bonita, there’s only one in the world like that.”
However, despite the massive fortune they’ve invested into saving Casa Bonita, the South Park creators claim that they can’t take all the credit for the widespread interest and early acclaim earned by their passion project over the past year. “There’s so much nostalgia around the place that a lot of that goodwill we’re feeling isn’t all our doing,” Stone said. “It’s just restoring something and a connection to the past.”
At the same time, if most other restauranteurs ever had to pour $40 million into a suburban sopapilla-puppet-show palace, the only “goodwill” they’d care about is the one where they’d be doing all their shopping for the next hundred years.
