Podcast: The Ride - Casa Bonita

Episode Date: June 14, 2024

The creators of South Park rescued a beloved childhood restaurant, spent a shitload of money on renovations and Scott Gairdner and family went for a visit. Did it live up to the hype? You'll have to click play to find out! (He reveals it like 3 minutes into the podcast) Donald's Quacky Duck City is up at The Second Gate: Patreon.com/PodcastTheRide  FOLLOW PODCAST: THE RIDE: https://twitter.com/PodcastTheRide https://www.instagram.com/podcasttheride BUY PODCAST: THE RIDE MERCH: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/podcast-the-ride PODCAST THE RIDE IS A FOREVER DOG PODCAST https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/podcast-the-ride Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Forever, dog. Warning, the following podcast may contain accidental testosterone checks, bad food that scarred an entire city, podcast host blood feuds, and spoiler alerts for a restaurant? Ah, but not just any restaurant. It's Casa Bonita, the greatest restaurant in the world, on today's podcast,

The Ride. welcome to podcast the ride a podcast about theme parks that might be heading for its most sincere episode wow that's that's my joke at least on my part i am scott gardner who i think is i'm going to find it very hard to be snarky today given what we're talking about and what i got to experience any uh any any jokes or jabs or cynicisms are gonna have to come from mike carlson okay i'm here will will i cry on this episode from hearing a tale well see i don't know sincerity i think comes in a few it doesn't mean there's i i don't think i'm although i i came close to tearing up in one part of this experience i actually did i don't think it's gonna cause tears for anyone else such as jason sheridan and i more sincere than the ocean city board well that was pretty

sincere pretty sincere yeah we're in a sincere area tearing up naming dots pastries you know it was you were lit up in a way that was like a next tier of jason fire yeah i didn't even get talking about so many thelasaka subs you know all these wonderful places you've been pacing around for the last week going like i'm gonna find a reason to say seven more of these restaurant names i I will insert them somewhere, come hell or high water. Yeah, you were more jacked up than like Toon Lagoon, or like talking about Toon Lagoon or Marvel Superhero Island. You were so revved up. Did you just go home and start punching walls and stuff?

I did start punching walls. I'm Superman! I was jack hacked up enough i i uh took care of a lot of outstanding medical bills that were wow i hadn't gotten around to pay wow just a flurry they're flying around the house right you were right a tornado and then they're all done writing personal checks it's just five or six personal checks putting them in the envelope i don't know if blue shield should have been paying more of this but i'm gonna take care of it so they stop bothering me well this this is i mean like yeah that was if you didn't hear last week's episode about the

ocean city boardwalk with alan mcleod you know alan talked about how you know that that's an area that that you grew up with jason and have a lot of nostalgia for and alan was talking about like how it's it's new nostalgia for him it like it feels so classic that it made him feel like he grew up with this place yeah and that's sort of how i feel coming out of this experience with casa bonita wow it's as if it implanted memories that was some of the teariness that i'll talk about is is like the emotion i felt experiencing like wow i'm gonna do this thing finally but i didn't i've never yeah i'm getting this entirely from a tv show uh um right which is just a credit to to what these guys have done uh on the note of that tv

show i was thinking how uh uh given that south park is is a big part of what we're talking about, that I should perhaps rip off another podcast and say, Howdy ho! Oh, yeah. To Clifford Nation. Sure, yeah. Because we are today talking about Casa Bonita, per their own copy, but this would also be my review, the greatest restaurant in the world. Wow. the greatest restaurant in the world a staple of the denver area since 1974 tributed in a 2003 episode of south park and today owned and recently rescued and renovated

by south park creators trey parker and matt stone um so here's a question at the top is uh is this a me thing am i the only one of the three of us who's like had a lingering obsession with this place uh or or have you guys also dreamed of it have you followed some of this uh story of trey and matt's purchase and renovation of this restaurant oh i've i followed it for sure and i do remember in 2003, this episode coming out. Yes. Um, that's a big one for me.

And we'll, we'll kind of like the, I think the story can kind of emanate from that episode because it's certainly where my awareness of it began. Uh, it's kind of like right when I started watching South park, I kind of wasn't into it in the early, early days.

I found it really abrasive and i was kind of late getting the memo that like oh no it's actually like really smart and clever and great stories and just like how sharp it had become and this it was season seven that they did this episode and there was there'd been like a wave of episodes that were getting a lot of press for like uh being so current and satirical and it was where they were in that, they'd begun that production process of, like, doing it with only six days before air, and, like, so it's, you know, it can be relevant in a way,

like, only SNL can otherwise. And, like, that's kind of the way, that was, like, the hype of South Park at the time. Then they do this Casa Bonita episode, which has nothing to do with anything. This is not top this was not about george bush or the iraq war or anything this was just pure silliness with the kids that heightens to this crazy degree i was always so for this was like this was my episode of the show regardless of it being about a themed experience although i'm sure that helped yeah i i watched it too at the time and i i thought it was fate i didn't know it was real i just made up a place yeah and i liked all the specifics of it but i didn't know and i don't

think at the time i looked into it yeah yeah so i for it was years later when i realized it actually existed that's yeah that that's kind of my journey with it as well because you're like it is it's so hyper specific what they go into yeah and you just are wondering like did they just invent the craziest most specific thing that a kid would be obsessed with and a horrible kid like hartman would be it would they would this place that would drive him to uh commit fraud and uh in danger and entrap his friend like cliff divers i was like oh you like that didn't seem like a place that didn't seem real yeah that's the only it's so specific that you think maybe it has to be real but like how can that be real what do you mean

there's a red mexican restaurant with cliff divers right and here that's what i'll start getting into that but let me just say at the very top, because and if I haven't done this already, you know, sometimes we like to build suspense with our reviews of an experience. And, and full disclosure, if you missed this, I got to go to Casa Bonita in Denver a couple weeks ago. And sometimes we like to kind of like, well we like it and actually oh and then i don't know then it made me sick and it was a terrible experience i cannot do any building of suspense in this episode this place fucking rules it was so great i kind of already spoiled it on twitter i was so high off of this place i just i can't pretend and part of the reason i want to get that out right at the top is it's very complicated to get into casa bonita as i discovered and you know our episodes go a little while if this is 90 minutes if it's two hours i don't want you to wait that long listener if you have any thought that you want to go to casa bonita get it going right now don't wait

till the end don't wait till the plugs i will go to casa benita denver right now and sign up for the mailing list and eventually maybe in like nine months to a year it's gonna be a while but i don't want you you know you add two hours on top of that that's the next you might miss an entire night with that so go there you guys too if you have any thought i will i'll forgive if you guys want to stop talking for a couple minutes go sign up for that waiting list um i would i would i would encourage it um you know it's complicated it's weird then you have to like reverse time it and like then buy plane tickets after the fact if you don't live there if you're anywhere close if you're drivable get on it right now let me just i just want to like hype this place up as much as possible right at the top here yeah that's i mean i wonder how long that'll

last how aggressive it'll be for maybe for at least a decade i don't know i don't know i could be i don't know as we record i just saw now i'm getting algorithm to like local denver news stories about what's the deal and how do we get in and i think maybe they're even maybe considering right now still like previews technically oh really might yeah i think possibly and i think they might change this process and make it a little easier to get into sort of soon but either way i think you want to play it safe you're gonna need wherever you're listening to this episode you're going to need to travel to denver if you don't do anything else if you stay there one night and turn around or do it all in

one day the way i did san jose a while back just whatever however it's got to work for you get it done yeah get to denver this thing is uh exemplary it sounds great i would love to go um yeah i think you know if you if you honestly if you start looking for like family vacations and that's kind of where it came from a little bit was like uh well we want to get him used to planes because we don't have to travel anywhere to go visit family but he thinks planes are neat so we wanted to give him a fun little plane ride it's why we went to san jose last year uh we thought well denver's a little bit further and then we can go to casa bonita but then a bunch of other complications happened uh uh highly highly encouraged and and i and also

uh listeners uh to motivate you to go to that website and sign up right now there are 600,000 people ahead of you jesus christ and you add yeah that's that's the stats. Are they only open on weekends right now? No, I don't know if it's every night. I was there on a Thursday. Okay. It might not be every day of the week. I'm honestly not sure about that. But yeah, that might limit it a little bit.

And no walk-ins, I'm assuming. I can't imagine. I can't imagine i mean unless i unless it is like a you know like what happened when we went to a blue bayou and like uh there was a lot of stress about like wait you gotta book that six months in advance and then magic mitch just uh pulled it right then and there well didn't he just say hey can i get in i think no there was like a i think it was like checking a it might have been kyle i'm not sure somebody somebody pulled it right like mitch just saying like come on let's just try let's try and it did work he does have a he has a magic in that regard sure um so anyways um as kind of we were saying the the south park episode uh november 12th 2003 season 7 episode 11

uh kind of uh where this place was was popularized was where a lot of listeners might know it it's probably where all three of us know it from um let me play a quiet low quality version of the of the scene that uh maybe made a lot of people first aware of this place. Apologies for the quality. This Saturday for my birthday, my mom says she's taking me to Casa Bonita in Denver and I get to invite three friends. Wow, Casa Bonita? Woohoo!

What's Casa Bonita? Dude, haven't you ever been there? It's a big Mexican restaurant where they have like, glitz jumpers and black bars cans and all kinds of stuff. It's like the Disneyland of Mexican restaurants. this saturday awesome that's that pretty much um yeah i mean before you even like gotten into the story just that like hyper description from cartman is very like what are we talking about the disneyland of mexican restaurants the disneyland of mexican restaurants get like cliff jumpers and blackbots

cave and it's like such a perfect thing for him to be i know what all about i also want to say as i play that clip that i'm going to try my best to say casa bonita throughout this episode but please understand that for 20 years this has been in my head in cartman's voice so it's hard to unscramble that i also noticed in an interview with nbc news about the opening of this place that trey parker also calls it casa bonita well that makes sense yeah yeah yeah uh he does the voice it is uh whiteified in his head uh so i'll try my best but that but that clip has been in my head for so long and that song wanting to feel as excited as he is yeah uh by this by this place uh um so the story becomes that he's not cartman doesn't get to go uh because butters

has been invited instead the long-suffering butters and this is one of the great butters torture episodes where in order to get to go to casa bonita uh cartman convinces butters that there is a meteor on the way to earth and he has to stay down in a bomb shelter and later in a refrigerator with a broken off handle in order to survive the apocalypse he has to stay there uh you know at least till the end of the week once this casa bonita event has passed um later at the end of the episode they arrive it's finally time for casa bonita and uh the police show up there after cartman uh before trapping butters and frauding the city uh and cartman then has to do a speed run through everything in the restaurant and this is one of these just delightful uh like getting to watch him as quickly as possible while

on the lam do all of the many fun attractions that this restaurant apparently has again we're all watching this we don't know if it's real yet or not uh but it's so like wait a minute so they've got like a whole indoor city and there's like a little bridge when you come in and then there's a puppet show and there's cliff divers and there's black bites cave ooh scary and sopa pias whatever sopa pias i didn't know about sopa pias did you know before i didn't know about sopa pias no okay because that sounds like something you would pull out in an episode and we go what are you talking about and you go well you never had sopaapias before we had them on the show. I don't think I've ever had soapapias, period.

Sure. I'm just saying. I could have seen it. This is not something I have seen at a restaurant personally. Yeah. And in the episode, you can't really tell what they are because it's Cruddy South Park animation. So they're just these little white things. I don't

know what i don't i've wondered for decades what soap appears are that's probably my favorite part of it where carmen's in a mad dash and the police are after him and he sits down and he raises a flag manically up and down and says soap is his business and i'm just like what is what could have possibly inspired this level of mania from from the guys like i mean well i mean and and just the question of is this place real or not that's really the big thing as you were saying mike that yeah uh that you wondered at the time um so uh i feel like i remember some moment of discovering, yes, it is real. And there were YouTube videos you could watch of the pre-COVID, pre-Trey Matt and Trey takeover. So, real stuff about the place.

Founded by a guy named Bill Waugh, who is just like, I forget if he's from Colorado or not. But he had just traveled to mexico and fallen in love with the culture and the food and uh and all the specific like subcultures puerto vallarta and acapulco and he wanted to bring all of these cult these cultures and his travels to america in a bigger way than just a a regular mexican restaurant so he starts this chain and it was a chain there were a ton of these wow um let's oklahoma city little rock tulsa um then this one in lakewood colorado fort worth kind of briefly um so there were a ton of these i don't think all of them had all of the bullshit yeah um i but at the base, it was just like a fun, especially well-themed place.

I think 73 is the first one, and then Denver's 74. I was talking to Josh Fadum about this, who grew up in Oklahoma, and he had fond memories of it. He didn't know any of the other stuff didn't know that it was on south park oh wow didn't know about the takeover but his memories were so fond regardless and he just voluntarily like sopapillas the sopapillas are so great um so okay well this holds all right so and i think it was a big big birthday party place for him he also mentioned a place called Crystal's Pizza,

which I guess was also in Tulsa or maybe Oklahoma City. This place, do a Google image on this. This looks incredible. This is like a weird, like, Victorian turn of the century. It looks like a casino for kids. It looks nuts. It had, it's a pizza place, but like arcade and a make your own Sunday bar and a cartoon theater where they would just be playing Pinocchio or whatever.

And it's great for kids. But apparently it's like became like the middle school makeout spot. Oh, wow. In the later years of the place. Josh mentioned that independently. It was just like similar place started by the same guy, Bill Waugh. So he was just this entrepreneur of like especially uh passed away yeah like maybe five years ago or so um so this guy like clearly brightened oklahoma and colorado for tons of kids uh but especially

with this and especially with this location which is built out of a former department store uh 52 000 square feet wow uh the best and biggest of any of them the main crazy feature being a 30 foot tall waterfall and lagoon for cliff divers with cliff diver shows every 20 minutes to half an hour um you ever seen cliff diving anywhere i like only know this from themed bullshit like this or the the mexico bow ride i mean i've seen like instagram like i'll you know when you're surfing through instagram they show you random things and i'll see some sort of like extreme sports i'll see like bike guys that have like the pov of like a little camera on their

sure sure i see stuff like this but i don't see a cliff i don't seek out cliff diving i just see it on accident never done it never attended it algorithm wants me to see it and i'll say okay i'll take a look at this sure that's about it though i've seen footage uh of like people on vacation doing it uh i feel like like maybe smaller scale but there's one video i feel like i always come across on the internet with a dog who can cliff that like a little dog who like his owner like calls him from the water so when it runs along that and like jumps out and into the water. Wow. Wow.

Okay. That's good. Uh, it's too bad. That's just like a dog that's out there and not something they can charge tickets for. Yeah. Jason,

is that cliff? Would you want to, cause you're a height miser. That's right. Would you want to cliff dive or is the water part of it too much? I think the water part of it is too much. You'd rather have a bungee cord attached to your leg. Yeah.

Before you hit the water, you would spring back up. Because I guess if I had little floaties on or something or an inner tube, the impact would probably deflate it. Oh, yeah. I don't think little floaties would hold up when they smacked against the water. Yeah, they would not hold whatsoever yeah i also i never particularly liked diving into even like pools i like jumping into pools but like diving i was never terribly good i can't do it for shit i've always been awful at that yeah i, I always smack something. Yeah. Yeah. Your belly? Yeah, just a big flap.

Belly, leg, yeah. Penis? It's just, yeah, just nailing my penis on that dive. Yeah, nothing like when you're, yeah, a big old dick flap right on top of it. Yeah. Big hard flappy bottom body of water. I wasn't able to dive until I started backyard wrestling in high school, and then I was able to dive off of the low diving board. Oh. I don't know if I until I started backyard wrestling in high school. And then I was able to dive off of the low diving board.

I don't know if I might have reverted. I might be too scared to do it now. I don't know. Can you go off the top rope or did you? Well, we didn't have a real ring. Oh, okay. So it was like, we'll go off the top rope with like, what? With an elbow?

No, no. Like a frog splash. A swanton bomb. Yeah, a swanton bomb. elbow no no like a frog splash well i have been in a ring in the last 10 years and i think i did do a swanton bomb off the top rope but it was there was a mat also on the ring oh okay so i didn't do it on the canvas a little unforgiving that canvas it sure is you're telling me i took a shoulder block from a guy from a real professional wrestler and i fell on my back and i went holy shit you do this in front of crazy

i did in front of a real life pro wrestler who's a friend of mine but you did there was this wasn't a show this was this was not a show okay thank god because i would have been embarrassed it would have been embarrassing to see how much i was like like wheezing after i took one back bump on the mat hmm yeah um i mean you say that but i i i imagine any of us would be wheezing oh my god yes instantly there would be no way yeah you'd really i guess you build up the tolerance for it but geez so we're saying we're not uh proposing any sort of ptr wrestling events in the near future well i wouldn't go that far i wouldn't say we're not proposing well this is news to me well i'm not i'm just saying like even

though this hurts and it's not good for your body especially this advanced age i'm not ruling it out is all i'm saying i'm not saying i have an idea either i'm just saying you said that phrase and i went you just didn't like the feeling of of officially boxing out the notion of a podcast the right wrestling exactly yeah i don't want to put it off the table yeah uh who do we go who are we evenly matched against it's a very good question because you think like trio podcasters but like let's be honest the sloppy boys are in better shape than we are probably that's true and they do like aggressive rock and roll shows. So they must be. Maybe they have high.

These are some real, these are some rock and rollers. We wouldn't stand a chance. They make mix meat out of us with their rock and roll energy. And they have high T, I bet, too. We're all the similar ages, but they were probably more aggressive than us, too. You just had your T checked and it was fine. It was accidentally checked, but like, because somebody wasn't, the doctor wasn't sure why this nurse ordered the full tea but i got my tea checked

and i was just normal and i was disappointed about it were you because you thought it'd be high i don't know what i wanted you thought the nurse put in the test because she's like oh man this guy must have high tea i gotta know i gotta know just for is. I gotta know. It was on the phone. She was on the phone. Look, I'm not gonna hit on him yet, but if I get that, if the T is what I suspect... Let me see those stats.

And then, well, maybe I'm gonna have to, like, get his phone number from the files. This interaction with the nurse was on the phone. I wanna be very clear about that. There was no... From the sound of this guy's voice, his tea must be through the roof.

Wait, I misinterpreted that. You mean you were talking on the phone to them? No, I'm saying the nurse who ordered all the blood work was on the phone. It was not somebody I was in person with. Oh, I thought you meant she was distracted, like she was on the phone while putting in the test. But then that might be even better if distracted, like she was on the phone while putting in the test.

But then that might be even better if she's talking to you on the phone and she's like, yeah, I got to know the tea's coming through the phone. I got to test this. If I could just swab the air around the receiver right now. I think she checked the wrong box on a computer. I think that's really what happened. But my tea is normal. That was not the point of any of it but my tea is normal but i bet those sloppy boys have high tea that's what i'm guessing so that being said now we're the

underdogs in the match yeah that's true so you're obviously high expectations we're gonna be the the good guys in that we're gonna come from under yeah we're gonna work from underneath they're gonna they're barely gonna boo the shit out of them. Of course, yeah. Look at these three weaklings fighting these aggressive aggro guys. That's what's going to sort of be the narrative of the match. Yeah. This is our, we've now, we've suddenly painted them as the roughest, the roughest three dudes. Yeah.

We know. Yeah, of course. These guys are wild. You have no idea. We've been around them. These guys, they are loose cannons. They might just like yell or something. Yeah. These guys are wild. You have no idea. We've been around them. These guys, they are loose cannons. They might just yell or something. Yeah.

These guys. One of them drives a car. There's not even a roof on the car. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, it's a good look. It's a good matchup, and we should think about doing it. That's all I'll say.

Jason, you want to weigh in on that? How anxious are you to get into the ring right now? It is the sort of thing where it's like, oh, it'd be fun to hit someone with a cane, but I'm like, oh, shit, I need that back. We'll get you a breakaway cane. I guess I do have a back. I do a backup at home, so.

Well, we should get a cane that will, like, it's a breakaway cane. Yes. We should get you, like, a stunt cane, and then, yeah, you can smack it over someone's head and break it sure you want me down doing head shots immediately oh yeah we're not we're gonna like we're gonna we're using props and we're playing dirty oh okay yeah well but it's a stunt cane to break away break away cane it'll be all right it should be fine all right get hyped for this

this is uh well we said it here. It's a one-sided... Podcaster mania. One-sided podcaster mania. One-sided for now. We just started... Scott started the feud. He brought up the sloppy boys.

Trying to think of another trio. No, and he's right. He's right. That's the match. Look, a smartless is not gonna, you know... Well, maybe we should take a couple shots and see if the truth can start. Yeah, they'd be the big dogs to take down. You're going to have to hit Bateman with a cane.

I mean, I feel like Bateman would be down for it. Oh, okay. He's pro. You like it? Pro, you know? Because your answer was pro. I asked why he'd be down for it, and you said pro. No, I said he's a pro.

He's a pro in what regard? He's a pro is a great answer of why he's down for it uh-huh why does that make him down for wrestling i'm a little nervous that of the three he's probably had some uh training and fighting like stage fighting so stage but stage fighting i mean you get a little bit of real production of zoro i don't like how jason's dropping the k-fabe here and acting like he would be into the act of fake fighting. We're trying to start

a real feud here. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. You gotta see, yeah, I'll bean that motherfucker with my cane. I'm gonna, yeah, I'm gonna peep,

I'm gonna try down the Ozarks. Right, and you're gonna be like, I don't, I saw his movie Bad Words or whatever, and it sucked. Like, you have to start

like a real feud here. You can't be like, well, I think he would be down to have some fake fighting. That's not how you do a wrestling angle. Like, you have to start, like, a real feud here. You can't be like, well, I think you'd be down to have some fake fighting. That's not how you do a wrestling angle. Yeah, okay. Smartless. You're going to be legless when we're done with you.

There you go. That's what you do. Ooh, that's good. That's a good diss. Yeah. Why is it so blue in here, Ozark, huh? There you go. Perfect.

Why is it so blue? What is this, the sky? Great. Now the feud has begun. Bateman, you're no pro right there's no way you're gonna be down to get in the ring with us exactly yeah right now okay uh uh i got a good diss coming up ahead and in the notes here because so uh all right so obviously uh early cause like 70s casa bonita must have been just like the dreamiest funnest place and i think

by their own admission this like this is what trey and matt grew up with i think this place was like without precedent and immaculate and if you're in the denver area you're not close to disneyland or whatever like this is the best thing you got and i think it's far beyond a chucky cheese or whatever too uh this place clearly next level restaurant where you get a cliff diver show unbelievable um but i think 90s into 2000s are not kind to this place by like 2000 it's falling on hard times in the current restaurant there's like a little uh history of the place that you can read and the fact that they the fact that they were willing to be up front about this and put this on a sign in the rest and own up to i i honestly i i'm speaking of feuds i feel like trey madder like kind of like uh you know

like picking a fight with the previous owners a little bit uh because this is how they summarize the the 2000s for this place diners expressed their disappointment sharing tales of bland sauces soggy tortillas reheated dishes and expensive hospital visits people they've it is definitive that that's really got so bad that people went to the hospital uh it became apparent that the primary focus lay on creating a memorable experience rather than culinary delight or even tolerable food the restaurant suffered numerous rumors of serving subpar food and one persistent rumor about dog food quickly earning the nickname casa no eda whoa wow easily yeah this is real like in a way that i feel like you know a disney thing is not gonna

like they like you know we i think we shy away from the dark moments in history of our themed experiences but they put it right there because they want to show off how far it came wow um yeah so this place you know it is a basically it was a heavily themed restaurant where the food was at best terrible and at worst could give you food poisoning and at this point i feel like you guys uh might be disappointed that it's no longer that way well i feel like i'm describing the ideal mike and jason restaurant well it's less exciting the way where it's consistently good food you don't have yeah you don't have the risk. You're not like, you're not playing the slots.

But then you know, right, you know the first time, oh, it's fine. It's good. Okay. Well, you're not rolling the dice next time. You know what you're getting. I know what you mean. I guess they have kind of lost the sense of adventure. That's right.

Yeah. Yeah. The great blandening of the Casa No Eda experience. I said this, I said this a couple of months ago. I think we were talking about this on the show, is that they didn't have ovens. Uh-huh. Everything was steamed. Yes.

All the food was steamed. Not really discovered by Trey and Matt until they owned it and went in the kitchen to start figuring out what they had to do. Right. And it was just so much more than they thought. It was in such bad shape. It was so strange the way everything start figuring out what they had to do right and it was just so much more than they thought like it was in such bad shape it was so strange the way everything was laid out and by the way the menu has not radically changed i mean they just serve basics it's tacos and enchiladas how do you make those entirely with steam i don't know it's confusing but yes it sounded like a real strange thing it was very dangerous too i'm sure you probably get to that. Yeah, yeah.

But like everything was very dangerous, set up in a way where like, you're like the people could easily get set on fire. The cliff divers, very dangerous the way they were doing it. Yes, yeah. Employee, like a constant endangerment to employees at minimum, just like guests possibly breathing toxic fumes. And as I said, you know, the tantalizing to you guys, but not to everybody, risk of getting food poisoning.

Here are some quotes about the previous food situation. Wait, let me find. Okay. This is from, I think it was in a Denverver post article uh victoria ganyan it was 57 uh there's got to be a place in hell for people who serve food like that oh wow she said after uh she and her family got food poisoning after a visit to casa bonita in 2013 uh the diners are condemning the food preparers to hell wow uh matt stone said the previous owners deferred maintenance in an almost superhuman way they just didn't take care of anything and they ran it

completely into the ground um the previous owners are named on the sign summit family restaurants i i do feel like the and i and i understand too i i feel like trey and matt were genuinely angry about the arc of this place um they say in an interview how um what they are doing now their ownership of this place is not a joke it is it's very sincere to them because they are upset that the place had become a joke right because it wasn't when they grew up with it and i kind of like that they're just like calling out yes summit fucked up summit did they ran it into the ground it was already in a lot of trouble you know obviously covid was like the final uh you know slam on this place but i think they were in plenty of trouble uh even before that

sounds like it yeah yeah yeah and this also goes back to how like matt and trey are like sincere theme park guys like these type of guys yeah and you've noted that before we've talked about like the imagination episode which clearly nods to the journey into imaginations yeah yeah yeah and the song imagination obviously a nod to epcot um and that's what i will that's what i was so excited about once i discovered like the full deal with this place what you're describing their sincerity them being theme park people has never been more evident than when you're in this place. That is what is so exciting about what they did here. So anyways, the place is not doing great through the 2000s, and I think it's propped up almost entirely by their association with South Park.

So this episode airs in 2003. Per a YouTube video filmed a while back, the people then at the restaurant say how they could count on a 10 boost in uh in business anytime the episode re-aired like so they would track oh that one's back up and reruns well which is all the time i mean like i comedy central now almost entire they kind of only show south park uh so that thing's probably airing once a week or so and like the next night like clockwork so they would have to staff differently they would they would bring more people on knowing that that episode had just aired um yeah so uh the

association becomes like very deep um the south park's offices where they make the show has been called casa bonita for a long time um and then uh pandemic this thing closes august 2021 they announced that they are purchasing the restaurant and saving it which almost certainly would have just gone under completely uh so they have paid three million dollars to own this thing outright um they start getting into what it's going to take to uh to renovate it and um you know make it everything you know like plus it up but also just like make it basically functional uh for for like to get it up to modern health code standards uh the initial estimate is 10 million dollars they are going to have to put into it to get it to be the way they want it uh that expands and

expands it ends up being 40 million dollars they put 40 million dollars of their own money into this place the cost of a motion picture yeah yeah uh uh yeah they could have self-financed a new team america easily with that money yeah yeah i but they are i they they've done some very canny moves with like licensing their back catalog did they didn't they do something where like a lot of the new south park are are made for tv movies essentially and like they sold those to one streaming service and they chop it up into episodes and sold it to another streaming service well it's all on boat i mean southbrook's moved a couple of times it was all on hulu it was on their own site south park studios and now the new movies come out on paramount plus but the archive lives on max

and any time that that is resold i mean i don't know the numbers but it's like they own half of it they it's like so it's the the greatest margins of ownership yeah yeah in modern television history they will uh uh you know hey i try to sell animated shows i watch the process everybody tries to make sure that no one will all lawyers work together to make sure nobody ever gets a deal remotely close to what these guys have ever again uh uh yeah so they've every anytime and it's going to keep happening it'll keep moving from venue to venue and they will make half a billion dollars every time it happens it's crazy yeah uh these guys are so loaded and so much of what excites me about this is using their loadedness just to make a fun thing happen for us for the world and for the

town they grew up in uh trey parker said somewhere it would have been uh they would have spent much less money and had a lot more fun if they had used this money to go hang gliding over volcanoes but instead they pumped it into a restaurant where apparently the stats are they would need to get like a million guests every night in order to turn a profit on this place i don't think they could fit that many i think we're dealing with a thousand tonight and it's bad i mean it's doing gangbusters but still how do you make back 40 million it seems hard yeah yeah yeah we're d it's the kind of margins that we usually are talking about when we're mourning a restaurant that has gone away right we're talking about a place that was so crazy it was never going to work and yet but just because of their finances

we're able to tell like this is a brand new thing that i mean i'm sure they want to make their money back but i don't think they have to immediately no like like it is not we're not remotely in the territory we're usually talking about it but like yeah how in the world was nba city ever gonna get out of the red uh it's great it's magical and there's no there's none there's no like awful bullshit companies involved and it's just these two crazy guys it's the only time when mega rich people like it's they do a cool like we've talked to quentin tarantino effect like he's preventing these theaters from being turned into like apartment buildings or condos in la it's like that's when if that's the only time i like it when somebody has a ton of money

like this yes yeah it's like if you're gonna do something fun okay great yeah yeah i think the only thing comparable absolutely is tarantino um yeah i know and that like they're putting their money where their mouths their mouths are and and doing things that reflect their sensibility. You know, Tarantino giving back to film and these guys giving back to crazy Colorado bullshit. It's wonderful. So, all right, what other details in there? A lot of this money went to unsexy stuff.

It went to HVAC system system plumbing electrical gas uh uh madstone say i think they were they were talking about a book of mormon and how during or kind of anything they do like if they're they if they're going to spend a lot of money they want it to show up on screen they don't want it to go to boring between the lines kind of stuff but in this case it had to like it was never they just had to like replace the tabletops because they were filthy and yeah just old meals or cakes between the tiles after decades and decades uh so all this boring stuff but again you're in there and you really feel it and i'll get into that uh but yeah matt stone said we're talking about just health and safety stuff like

so someone won't die yeah i imagine there was a lot to be redone for the cliff diving poor shit like i'm sure yes that pool and stuff needed a redo that's that's definitely a huge area uh okay apparently if you went there uh you know circa 2019 maybe for decades and decades decades uh horrible chlorine stink right around there but especially but probably through the entire restaurant and you just like took that as a given like all right i'm gonna have fun but it does smell in casa bonita i can attest it does not smell today uh it was ice cold water those guys had to do that show and then just and then dive straight into uh so they've uh they finally put in heaters for the first time in history so the divers are comfortable uh and then uh here's also from denver post uh other features like the old cliff diving pool were actual physical

hazards it turned out that divers once they leaped into the pool could only exit through a 30 inch wide underwater tunnel brimming with pipes then they emerged from the water into an electrical room oh god yeah i read that that's that's pretty wild said somebody i don't have the first name somebody named shoemaker who was helping with this process there were 200 amps of power directly to the left when i saw it i called matt and told him this is the most dangerous room i've ever seen of any type of room he has never been in a room with as much capacity to murder people room full of spikes is less dangerous yeah this is like this is a batman villain trap right this was their day-to-day was something yes if it wasn't people if you were pushing the people off instead of them diving on purpose that's the only shift you'd have to make

to make this a literal torture device that's crazy yeah yeah so insane so they did all of these and imagine and like their feet like i'm sure they thought this was a risky dumb thing when they got into it they're probably like i don't know a lot of money will we ever see it back i don't know and now i gotta put in money for renovations then that number quadruples and in the middle of this they are probably like what the fuck are we doing why yeah how was this really that important to us and they made an episode recently that depicts their that kind of like is a stand-in for this process i'd seen this episode and didn't realize that's what it was where cartman buys a hot dog restaurant wait he's living in a hot dog already in recent seasons he

and his mom fell on hard times and they had to move into a hot dog restaurant and then he flips it into like a fancy restaurant with water slides and zip lines and stuff and i didn't realize while watching it that it is all an allegory for the annoyance of having to having to do this uh just the relatable story of when you buy a restaurant and then the cost overruns are enormous um so anyways that brings us to today there's articles for a long time about like uh you know when is this gonna open and is it gonna open is it gonna be more complicated than we thought uh but also rumors are are flying that they fixed the food finally uh dana rodriguez the the lead chef is like a like lauded uh denver chef uh uh so maybe that's finally been fixed they've plussed it up thematically in a huge way

as all this is forming i'm like i i want to figure this out i want to understand cartman's excitement i want to see if they fixed it today i gotta get here uh so um as i was saying i wanted to take my son on a reasonably short plane trip. So we bought plane tickets to Denver now to figure out Casa Bonita. Went to the website. Huh? There is nowhere to get tickets or reservations. Wait, you just sign up for the mailing list and that's all you can do?

And you don't know when they're going to email you back? And I reached out to some other people who I know went like our friend doug jones my friend joe carnegie and they're like oh yeah oh i booked mine as soon as the website was up and running god crap shit how did they know about this and i didn't know about it so now i'm trying and i complained about it on an episode of the show is there any way i could figure out and i have the plane tickets already like there's no way this will line up uh i guess 600 000 people are in line ahead of me do i have to cancel this trip what do i do uh friend of the show landon zachheim heard my plea uh uh who you you know from immersive style he's like a he's a film festival he was there with he was there at the minotaur incident oh he, he was one of the participants. Yes. And he was, despite that, he did not turn his back on the podcast, The Ride Boys.

I would have understood. He didn't chalk us all up as Minotaur-fearing cowards. That's right. He wanted to help out. He worked a few angles with his connections in the Denver area. He was trying to figure out a way. So helpful. Like, I really want to figure this out for you.

I said, why? Why? This is so nice of you. Why? And he said said i just want to hear that episode of podcast the ride here we are now uh nice man really tried his best and emailed a ton of people for me none of it ended up working out this was just like an unscalable wall i thank landon for trying everything uh but in all that time, I never canceled the trip. And then suddenly Joe Carnegie,

one of the people who told me the deal with the mailing list said, guess what? My date is up. I can't do it anymore. Do these dates happen to work for you for a table, for three, for cliffside dining?

And I said, that is exactly when I am booked to be in denver and i got to do it thank you joe you rescued this experience and you get that it was a table of three so it could be a family thing i could take my four-year-old son to experience cliffside dining uh a miracle so great um so we uh we go to denver we spend a few days there find a lot of fun kids stuff to do uh but we build up to this this is the last night this is the the main attraction uh and we head over to lakewood kind of west of downtown denver um in the episode of the show uh when uh cartman and everybody kyle's mom when they arrive at casa bonita you can see in the

background like it's a subtle thing that everything in the background is all like pawn shops and strip clubs and stuff it's just a subtle thing that's not referred to and i was like is that going to be consistent with the deal with this place and sure enough the entire drive-in through lakewood is just like seedy motels and vape stores it is like it is nothing like it is not like some charming drive up to this this charming place and then you you get there and it's just in a strip mall that's just like a ross and a dollar tree and a planet fitness could not be less glad it's just right next to like a big dentist's office but shining above all of that this beautiful pink tower what a pink oh it's a perfect yeah it's such a 70s pink they apparently

had to try 27 shades of it wow to get the right kind of pink uh uh it's per it's like it's i mean it's like the carthay circle tower it is a theme park weenie right uh a shining beacon over lakewood it's so beautiful right away i feel like cartman and i'm not even in there yet uh spectacular fountain outside which was also completely redone all these thankless things they did this fountain was going to crumble entirely uh but there they had to restore a fountain and the mood outside is just amped up everybody is buzzing it's families that just came out of their families who can't get wait to get in there like boy the spirits in this place uh which is what i've just i just tried to retain and keep it here in this episode uh get inside we gotta go straight to the bathroom just

the bathrooms are great the tiles just the choice of tiles and the colors and i'm like if i like the bathrooms this much this is gonna be unbelievable yeah uh then get a bigger better sense of the lobby it's like this little it's like this indoor village and there's you know there's little flags and the strings of flags and fruit carts it is immediately so epcot mexico pavilion and like rendered in that it is like clearly instantly theme park quality uh if this place was ever kind of like funny cruddy uh like a miniature golf course or something not today this is like true i don't know who they got to work on this production design wise but it is so high caliber.

It's incredible. It's also got, I feel like the coziness and the intimacy of like one of my favorite little parts in theme parkdom. And I'm so sad this place is gone. The little town in the Norway ride when the ride is over. Oh, little town that you have to rush through to go see the boring movie. Right, right. You know what? i shouldn't call such a shot i i'm fond of the boring movie but we have to admit it's a boring movie i when i was younger i thought you had to watch it to get out yeah yeah and and i think in later years they had the doors a little more propped open but as a kid i mean a little crack of light so you know i

could leave yeah well i didn't know i thought like well the doors must be locked we had to be respectful and watch this movie i think i thought that about all theme park doors like there's no way i can leave i assume it's just steel clonk it's prison doors and then i understood how um fire safety in public places work yes sure yes and like that you know people with little kids need to be able to exit due to a freak out and go to the bathroom whenever they want but i know what you mean the little town you would the boat would pull up in that is what it is about that it's like so cozy and you know it's an unload area so you don't get to spend any time

there no i would just i could have just like we sometimes we talk about like where would you want to get a drink in a theme but i would just i just want to like pull up a chair in that that little town and just sit there for a while just watch boats come in and out um yeah that was not an option nor do i know what a norwegian cocktail would be probably do they drink schnapps i feel like a lot of countries in europe let's say it just defaults to a schnapps or some sort of liqueur are they i mean is are they a it's got to be a beer culture right you would think i would think so but i don't know that not something i learned about in the norway yeah that one's really looming norway maelstrom that's what that's that's a big sneaker that we've never gotten to yeah that's a family

favorite yeah yeah um the neat uh neighboring country uh finland i learned about and then never bought or tried the finnish drink, which is a can. They sell in America, they sell cans of it now. And an early investor was Miles Teller. So when we were on our celebrity liquor trick, I was going to show up one day with Finnish long drink. And when I went to buy it at Ralph's,

it was out. They didn't have it. Ralph's? Wait, yeah, go ahead. Finnish long drink is the name of it? Finnish long drink. I think it goes back to, there was an Olympics after World War II

in Finland, but alcohol was still kind of hard to come by. So they figured out a way to mix a liqueur with grapefruit soda to make it stretch a little more so i think it's like a grapefruit soda like liquor drink and is miles teller finish why is miles involved he uh was at an event where they were giving out samples and he really liked it so he bought in. Okay. Well, I would love to see him reprise his type of role as maybe he could play himself in a miniseries like The Offer that is about him putting together the deal to make the finish long drink.

Okay. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, that would be good. The Offer is on Paramount Plus. Is that right? I can only hope. I hope that some know because i forgot all about the offer but i do newly have paramount plus well yeah give it so give it a look yeah yeah you gotta go see that ninja turtles and watch the offer which ninja turtles are you gonna watch

the newer one oh the new movie the new movie from like last year yeah yeah yeah you gotta go straight to the offer though to see that yeah i think i could play this part i think i could do it after but that sounds good so but not a bad impression of that impression of al pacino yeah i think i think i did it okay anyways we got end of norway ride vibes right in the lobby it's cozy yeah i look in a window and there's a little retro tv and what is on the retro tv it is an ad from the 70s for casa bonita starring ricardo maltobon montalban yes wow he did does that as i'm missing the l um yeah it's like maltobon i just want to make sure we were talking about the same guy no mike i'm talking about ricardo maltobon without an l obviously um it's like a different off-brand ricardo maltobon he's oh yeah he's a white guy different guy i'm sorry i meant i meant richard o malto malto bond less exciting it's still good

denver's hottest Pitchman He was big In Denver's theater This is the man Of course That starred in Fantasy Island

And was con On Star Trek Yep Villain of Naked Gun Yeah Yeah I didn't know He did ads for this

This is unbelievable Yeah And like Then you have to look Through kind of like A frosted window And then the TV's Kind of fuzzy And that's where I'm like oh i see what they've done here they have just kept the

70sness of it and probably amped it up i imagine this place felt kind of eternally 70s already but just probably due to not replacing anything i don't think it was like a choice but in that way that we kind of just want disney to say uh tomorrowland equals 70s or 80s or whatever right like just but that's just what it is don't run from it that's i feel like what they've done here they just decided it's it is perma 70s let's not fight it uh and it's this like dreamy 70 it's like a storybook 70s it's the 70s the most pleasant sun-hued 70s mixed with like vibes of tony baxter's new fantasy land it is so charming storybook and with some of the atrocities we've seen of like recent flipping you know what was in my head was like uh boy we really got to

update ralph brennan's jazz kitchen for modern you know they don't understand all these railings in this new orleans vibe what do modern people want well they want like plain white walls and uh the word jazz written on the wall in sterile pink font that i don't think we have we talked about this on the show i don't know so brutal what they did to ralph brennan's jazz kitchen at downtown disney around there but i was just there the other day and it does it does the personality's gone yeah yes with some like the odd agenda of like modernizing and that being it i guess that a restaurant has to look like a property brothers flipped house yeah i don't get it and i think we're gonna look back and go like

the atrocities that we have committed to ripping out all the personality of play when you should just like enhance what it is like start with its core and then like make the core shine you know and maybe i'm wrong i think they they think they're making it more fall in line with the future aesthetic of that downtown disney which is very like and that's okay i like that some of that downtown disney stuff is kind of retro 60s right that's close to what i'm describing um because that'll sort of stay timeless and feel modern but future but retro all at once so i feel're like, well, if we make it like this, at least like it's white, it falls into like the color scheme of what the art shows.

I don't know. To me, it just looks like a, you know, it looks like a frozen yogurt shop from 2009. Yes. I don't disagree. It's like it's out of date in the wrong way. I don't disagree. There's a new like entry sign i just saw went up for downtown disney and i saw it described okay yeah mid-century modern but i was like that's just the

dot isn't that just the dodgers stadium sign oh maybe a little oh did you see what the din tai feng is really coming along Where is it? It's right where the movie theater used to be So you come in there and there's a big It's a big building, it's really well themed And I was like very We walked in there a couple weeks ago I was very impressed So that's something to look forward to

It seems like a mixed bag Some of these re-dos at Downtown Disney Because look, Downtown Disney Not all of the aesthetics were... I'd say we questioned a lot of the aesthetics all over Downtown Disney. And the replacement, and I forget the name of it, for the bar for your beloved, and I can't think of the name of the old bar. Oh, yeah.

Centrico. Centrico. Fuck Centrico. Yeah. It kind of looks nice. It's probably fine. Yeah. It looks nice.

Oh, wait, wait. Kayfabe. No. Fuck Centrico. Yeah, yeah, yeah. centrico yeah it kind of looks nice it's probably fine yeah it looks nice oh wait wait kayfabe no fuck centrico yeah i will i'll uh i'm gonna get a lot of equipment ready to uh burn it to the ground on opening day i feel like there were and maybe there's not like a little fire pit but there were people just kind of chilling out there's more room sort of to hang out out there and it felt like when you're when you see people like having a good time at a place and it feels like a fake commercial where they're all just like laughing and like you're looking at the concept art right but that's what was happening

when i was we were walking by there i was like everyone's having such a fun time here it's almost hard to reconcile the places at downtown disney being actual places where people gather right and have fun right but that's what's happening so i mainly associate a lot of them with like families of eight being like we need to be fed yeah this is we are absolutely mowed down by this day yeah um but no that's not always yeah i saw i saw people and they were not maybe they were in their 30s the early 30s and they were having a blast wow and then there was a chime and they all stopped what they were doing and turned and looked at you. Oh, everyone in downtown Disney did that?

Yeah, it was just the horror movie. It became like an A24 horror movie where it's just like unnerving but not super scary. Yeah, that was a tell. That was a tell that maybe it's still not a normal place. Until that time rang. Until then it was fine, yeah. But anyways, I just love that they they embrace the 70s it is the 70s and then we are ushered up to our cliffside dining location which by the way i have to if uh listeners if you intend to go to this place it's a little bit extra i

think just spring for it i think you got to do the cliffside dining uh uh you know because if you're they went in Rome, I think you got to do it. And so now we get this like incredible entrance where we're like going upstairs and there's like tears and you start to get a sense of the of the space and how many like little areas and rooms there are in this in this restaurant and then we arrive in kind of like the main atrium where you can really see everything and it were two steps in and we go holy shit they did it it's perfect you could tell it is there was no question i think we were like there's still a possibility that we get in and it's kind of cheesy or that maybe they actually did cheap out a little bit on the renovation not at all the vibes are incredible we are both our jaws are both dropped from second one we we go we walk past a mariachi band and which is i remember from cartman's speed run that he like stops and dances for two seconds and then keeps going and i stop and dance for two seconds and then keep going. And we get to our cliffside dining table. I think as soon as we land, there is a cliff diving show in progress. It's insane.

It's so great. I think you can watch it from down on the bottom. And they call it a splash zone. It's a splash zone. You can get wet and you do get wet. But you can also watch it from up on the top. This moment especially, and i'll post a video of this there is a moment where uh i uh grab my son to take him all the way to the edge

as close as we can get to to get a full vantage point of the cliff diving and the diver walks he climbs just onto rocks it's not even like sea world style like you can see the little platforms that are they just walk on like jagged looking rocks bare feet they they they just explore wherever they want and one of them comes up two feet away from us and you know aaron's not trying to like be a cinematographer here sure but the built-in lighting is so immaculate on camera it's just this this like cascade of glowing and amazing theatrical light and then like twinkling stars all over the ceiling which i know they didn't have before they didn't have any of this before lighting incredible sound incredible they like pumped broadway stage money wow into this place it is so disney level it's insane and then watching the cliff my son's been talking about it ever since he was no he's never

seen anything like cliff diving he's never thought and let alone how close you get um it's just again look we're heading into half an hour of me going, and then this was great. And then this was really great. I feel, if you're sensing, I feel insecure about just how sincere that I have to be. I know I'm really thrown off guard here, but what else can I do? It's just like, I think I knew it'd be cool, but I still thought maybe it'd be like cheesy cool. And the fact that it it feels absolutely disney caliber yeah that was the shocker to me and then the cliffside dining seats are next to rock walls so you're next you're in a fake rock it's like it is somewhere between mexico pavilion and pirates

of the caribbean i will say there's absolutely quarters of this that feel like the caves in the beginning parts of the caribbean and i can't believe they pulled that off like that it sounds like nonsense when they say it in south park it's the disneyland mexican restaurants i bet at the time that was said kind of in jest but now it just is it fully is that it's it's incredible that's that's wild yeah i would be so interested to know like because there's not a ton of great footage of it inside from 30, 40, 50 years ago. No, not really. Yeah.

So I do wonder, like, obviously, I'm sure it looks 10 times better now, but I do wonder what it looked like opening day. Yeah. I don't know. And yeah, I don't have the best sense of of the vibes previously i mean i think this place i think some of the magic of it is it's like modern money supporting really good bones and the the photos i saw made it the old those photos i could find made it clear that like all these features were there you know they're like here's the little like here's the town square and a fountain and a

dedicated sopa pia's stand and then like the every beat of black bart's cave which i will get into was all there they may have fully ripped it out and started over but i don't think they reinvented the space or i i mean i think they they like pretty perfectly recreated what they had been ripping out you know right um so i'm sure it was awesome when it opened i mean just like it's what you want out of it's in the league of i'm trying to think of like the best disney example of this it might not be this but like that snow white redo i think is wonderful yeah i think you know it doesn't stray far from the ride that was probably there in 1955 but they subtly use modern technology they don't like make it fully screen ride but they just like support and amend and i think it's insane that i'm putting this in

league with like some of disney's best ride redos yeah i absolutely do well and also i i think it would be harder to make something that would continually impress um like i guess what i mean is like you have to sit there and eat so you're watching everything and you're existing by it for an hour or whatever yeah you got time to stare right and

so like see all the seams yes right because like a right i'm sure there's fake rocks that we love that you would sit and eat a meal by them. And by the end, you would be like, well, some of the magic might be gone because I can see that it's actually a little cheaper or the paint isn't so good or whatever. Oh, absolutely. Yes. And it requires, like, a blue bayou, which completely does hold up. Like, it's got to be.

But it's dark in there. What's that? Dark in that blue bayou. That's true. That's true. Well, you know but it's dark in there what's that dark in that blue bayou that's true that's true well you know it's it's dark in here too yeah but like i don't know not as dim they definitely aren't like hiding anything yeah yeah now uh one thing i will say about like you know you just said well you know because you like you know you sit there for a while you sit there for an hour this is not necessarily true i feel like the what they encourage essentially is fairly quick turnover because there's so much interest in this place yeah but also um all right the food this is a big question people might have uh um well here i'll get into it but just vaguely let me say the food's not great they

didn't get it to grow interesting now we're not in dog food territory we're not in casa noida territory but it was pretty quickly broadcasted i would say that the food might not be great because here's how this played out uh the reservation was at 6 p.m and we got there a little earlier so we were seated at 6 p.m we ordered the food arrived at 608 wow really jammed this out and i feel like that communicated this place is not about the food you will you know eat up enjoy it'll be fine but uh the fact that it was out that quickly and that there are constant pa announcements for all the other things there are to do kind of let us know oh i see food is like a technicality here we provide it it's like at a wedding or something but probably it's more about

the other stuff gotcha um so uh yes food wise um i mean this is something i talked to doug about this he was like because he got to go a couple months prior i think i asked him about food and he said i think he said fine but boy if you ask around denver if you're in denver and you talk to locals and you just bring up i'm here for partially for casa bonita they will all say oh that food oh jesus that food and we experienced that we went to a trader joe's and we got exactly that and somebody said at that trader joe's uh you know what i don't think they fixed it i don't think i still don't think it's any good so denver is definitely like a denver thing they will they are so like they have not forgotten how terrible that food is.

And so much of the, like, mystery of this place is did they get the food better? And, like, kind of. Erin's was worse than mine. She got something vegetarian. And she said it was like a serviceable microwave meal. Wow. And it's not Taco Bell quality even? Well, look, we're on different i don't know what

to say to you to that because you put taco bell in the highest caliber food well did you eat the big cheese yet mike i have not had the big cheese taco bell thing yeah there's a big cheese at a big cheese it uh can we can we put an inch amount on like? Like, I think, like... Well, a Crunchwrap, if you've ever had a Crunchwrap at Taco Bell, it's kind of like, I would say it's like this big right here. And I think the Cheez-It's sort of a similar, like this. You know, when Steven Spielberg's making the lens, when he's sort of imagining a shot in a movie with his fingers. Sure, sure.

Imagine an onset of Last Crusade finger frame forming. With Steven Spielberg. If you want to Google the image search that, that's about how big the Cheez-It is. I mean, you were making me wistful. A Cheez-It in Steven's hand like that, too. If somebody wants to make that, I would appreciate it. You were making me wistful for the magic of cinema

just doing the hands. Well, of course you could do that. I guess you could do two. You could do these. You could do this. There's a big cheese so you can get the big cheese in a Crunchwrap or you can get it as a tostada. Or you can just buy the big cheese in. Oh, really?

Okay. What's your, have you done it? I haven't yet. No. You made a disgusted face, but I don't think you meant to convey that. No, I was just burping. Yeah. So you were, oh i was just burping yeah so you were burping that was a disgust he's having pre-indigestion just thinking about it did you have a couple sodas this morning no so jason's been saying he's been meaning to eat more big cheez-its he'll get there i have been eating organic cheez-its though the annie's organic

cheez-its that i've been buying from Sprouts. Well, you're going to see a difference there, I think. Yeah. Or you've got to go organic with your Cheez-Its. Well, you do. You know, the ingredients are organic. See, I just like- That means good for you.

That means healthy. I just get Cheez-Its, but I like the extra toasty ones. They need a little extra burn, a little more carcinogen in there. Oh, yeah. You throw them in a fryer. You put a little oil on them. Oh, sure. in there oh yeah you throw them in a fryer you put a little oil on oh sure oil and butter if you want it really crispy you take the extra yeah you do it yourself you throw them in the oven yeah you make a little extra toasty and then i crisp them up

yeah right right yeah it makes sense that's a bummer though that's not even maybe it is taco bell quality i just don't know how to answer that because I know you regard Taco Bell very highly. As far as garbage food, it's high up there. Yeah, it's one of my favorites. I would not call it garbage food. I definitely would not call it garbage food. I mean, I think it's kind of common that... I feel like I've had a lot of experience with the been-here-for-decades Mexican restaurant

where the food is not that good and it makes you feel kind of bad with the been here for decades mexican restaurant where the food is not that good and it makes you feel kind of bad after the fact right where you just feel the like cake thon gunk in the back of that maybe like oh well part of it being open forever means they haven't replaced this or that so i was not surprised when i heard that the food wasn't great and nor like look i will i will go back to those places i maybe this is my area of the city walk loyalty where your guy's willingness to go back time and time again to places that make you sick or try to put plastic in your food yeah maybe i feel that with because i do just like the ambiance of a classic mexican restaurant which made this the old it's probably why this of all things really spoke to

me yeah you're describing like what i call like margaritas enchiladas sit down mexican restaurant as opposed to just like a taqueria where you order at the counter yeah yeah yeah that's yeah if you're and where it's maybe it's it's dim and there's decor and the wall's full of stuff yeah it's a little dark stained glass yeah probably some inherent kind of 60s 70s feel because it's dim and there's decor and the wall's full of stuff. Yeah, it's a little dark. There's stained glass. Yeah. Probably some inherent kind of 60s, 70s feel because it's when a lot of them opened. Maybe a lemon rind with like 151 they light on fire, you know.

Oh, sure. I haven't had that, but that sounds fun. I forget where that's in like Echo Park. I forget the name of that place. Okay, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But so was it like an Acapulco or an el torrito like some of the local chains probably closer to that which i and i have plenty of fondness for el torrito yeah i will like tolerate that kind of uh um but it's shockers that like i can't believe i didn't like the chips the chips is kind of my

big i will pay like tortilla chips are i try to eat healthy in every other area so that i can just shovel tortilla chips uh you know possibly multiple times a day especially if that is my that's my big place yeah fair enough basic but i will absolutely go to town how what type of chips like what are you have a brand do you have multiple i mean lately it's just like uh i try to go as it's like trader joe's unsalted gluten free like let's step it down as many levels as we can but i still am gonna eat like the full meals worth wow for no reason it's the biggest thing i should watch and then at a restaurant i will just like absolutely tear them up i was shocked that these i did not want more of them uh so i'm like oh man are we in a bad territory because aaron didn't really like hers mine i went with uh carnitas tacos which

was recommended by a food blog that i read and i definitely liked it more than aaron did fine just totally fine i think this is a place where the sauces are doing a lot of heavy lifting so if you go here make sure that you're doing something that is sauce forward i think aaron's was rescued by it being christmas style um just make sure you're seeing a sauce in that listing because like right i think that i think we're dealing with pretty basic i think like inherent flavor and juice of meats is not necessarily incredible what do you mean christmas style is that like a wet burrito, green sauce, red sauce? I think so.

Now I have to remember because I didn't have something Christmas style. I know I've had that somewhere. I thought it means that it has a little piece of reindeer in it. Erin famously vegetarian, but she makes an exception. Yeah, she's on vacation exception yeah she makes a reindeer

she makes an exception for christmas yeah um what is it i know i think you're i think your description was uh fairly accurate yeah yeah red yeah red and green sauce yeah totally um so anyways uh but it's fun you know like not bad and i didn't feel bad after the fact. I've seen reviews, and I've seen vloggers go to this place and get it out of the way. As I got stuff out of the way at the top of this, they started by saying, and I'll tell you all about the food. Spoiler, didn't make me sick. I think the possibility was so high before that Denver locals, that's the first thing you have to address.

Because I understand. Probably everybody wanted to be here. It's so fun. so high before that denver locals like that's the first thing you have to address is i'm like because i understand i'm like probably everybody wanted to be here it's so fun i'm sure it was fun even pre-tray and matt yeah like if that possibility is so high again other than for you guys who i feel like would have been at the prior version on a monthly basis that's true yeah sure extra extra steam please I would say. I'm trying to figure out how to steam carnitas. Scott, good move. I think carnitas are usually pretty safe.

I think the worst thing you can do to it is just dry it out. Yeah. Well, I think that's how it was, but then they put like a decent amount of salt. Yeah, that's what the steam is for. Well, the steam keeps it moist. Yeah. Maybe I might have liked it more if they'd, i hope they didn't take out all of the steamers they should attribute to the to the original process they should have kept a few steamers um but anyway it is also also shockingly neither of us really cared for the drinks we found the drinks pretty sugary and like oh okay that's stupid so we're a little like, oh, we're loved.

But are we are we in the territory of theming is good, but the food's not great and it's improved, but there was nowhere to go but up from like you might go to the hospital. Yeah, the drinks were redeemed a little bit later by again. This is from the same review said to avoid the margaritas and get something called El Diablo, which is a mezcal drink. And that I thought was actually spectacular. I thought it was a really good drink. Being that mine are stolen from another food review, they're fairly vetted. I don't think I could speak to,

don't take my food recommendations, but I took mine from another one. So listeners, if you're going, El Diablo and carnitas tacos. And what strain of sticky Colorado kush did you enjoy beforehand? from another one so listeners if you're going right el diablo and carnitas tacos and what strain of sticky uh colorado kush did you enjoy beforehand um yeah yeah no i got the uh yeah i got the grateful dead uh specific varietal yeah they've been working up something yeah yeah personally approved yeah yeah yeah that's what the guy

did you see the new story i met send it the guy who snuck a bong into the sphere and got been banned and it's been banned from all madison square msg oh no mike's greatest fear he's on dolan's dolan's no list yeah and i haven't been put on there thank god but i won't try the bong now i know dolan's no list is really something given that his yes list contains some of the worst human beings who ever walked the earth point yeah uh anyways uh you also you don't have to get all your drinks at the table because there are four bars all over this place which i don't think there were before. On the way out the door, a local said that there are activations that when you order a drink, ask about the activation.

And I was running out of time and I didn't get to do it, so I don't know what it is. So, listeners, when you order a drink, ask about the activation. I really want to know what that is. Something with lighting or something pops up, some little secret don't know i wish i knew um now we're starting to review this thing not in the best terms food wise but we're being kind of forgiving because we're in the best mood ever yeah uh and then uh the sopapillas stage comes the sopapillas are free with the meal as are sodas i thought that was funny you get sodas free with the meal um uh but so uh sopapillas change everything these are this is everything that cartman made them out to be this it was like the definition of great taste in your mouth on the

way out that i don't care that we were disappointed by the first step these are incredible i don't even know how to they're like mexican pastry bites and they're so soft and tender like they're hollow inside so they just like crumble as soon as your mouth touches them um and it oh my god just so so delicious and like uh like covered in honey like like they're all just like fried up they all just do like a little fire bath and then somebody's like squirting honey on it as it goes just like really simple i think this is like a three ingredient item i don't know how they do it but like these are they're they're unbelievable and this was the most satisfying in terms of like what south park promised so please so please please watching his

like drunkenness on them and and the flag and you get to do the flag i don't know if this place invented the flag i don't know if they i mean obviously they predate bubba gump i don't know the history of the thing that waves the server down uh but it's great and they put new flags at every table wow the beautiful that are like like really well chosen fabric a beautiful pattern the logo i love the casa bonita logo so much i found the flag so charming i wanted to take one home with me and i did they sell the flags i have a flag at home and my son plays with it and we play like let's play dinner time and he raises the flag and we it really stuck with him and that's all you want is you know my you just want experiences that they are still talking about weeks later he's talking about so many aspects of

this as am I that's what happens when my daughter wants to watch the Chuck E. Cheese me and my friends video again is she comes up to me and she goes, she just starts flapping her wings like Helen Henney and then points at the TV. That's the signal? Yep. She just flaps? She'll flap. She gets this like little smile on her face

and she starts flapping and then she points at the TV and I go, you want to watch me and my friends with Chuck E.? And she's like nods. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Geez. Well.

And Tiki, she's a Tiki room fan now as well because she went there so then she'll be like tiki tiki tiki like she'll say it a little bit but then she'll like if you just play the song on the like boom box then she will be like and she'll point to the tv she wants to watch the video of the tiki room wow wow so she'll give there there's yeah she will do the thing where she's like remembers this i don't know that she really remembers being there in person, but she should. She probably does. Yeah, both of those things obviously are memorable to her. I think this morning, because I was refreshing my memory on some of this stuff and of the South Park episode,

and I was like filming that scene off the TV. And then my son said, can we watch the one with the guy running from the police yes we can yes he remembered watching the clip of cartman that's funny doing the speed running associate he knows that he was there um so anyways uh uh soapy is highly recommended i don't know where else in the world serves soapy as i'm sure there are places i've just never been to one before yeah but like so so much better than the little white triangles that were depicted on south park uh like truly trans really really great dessert did you guys eat a plate of them and then call more call for more soap of pias i wanted to really badly just

to do it i think they aren't endless. I think it's like a dollar more, which is still the price is right on that. And you could go up to the dedicated Sopa Pia stand at any point and just like purchase them piecemeal, even once you've left your table. Because, by the way, when you leave your table, the table is done. Don't leave a jacket there. As a blogger said, it's not your home base for the night uh you what you know if they see nobody there they're turning that table over right right there's 600 000 people to get through you can hang out inside you can go to the little

yeah yeah that's what you do you can stay in it as long as you want and that i guess is the area that i'm getting into i'm gonna back up a little bit to the cliff diver presentation because there's something important that i forgot about first of all these divers are so great not just with the dives which are obviously very impressive and that they're on these precarious rocks and right next to us so cool also part of it uh that they're wearing these very 70s like burnt orange shorts uh that are specifically what trey and matt remember and they requested these to be made again to just keep it firmly in that 70s zone uh so the shorts are custom and they're so you know besides the dives themselves it's wrestling they've got the audience in the palm of their they hype everybody up they like almost do it and then they don't they like just like everybody is uh enthralled

with their every move these guys are so great the interplay the way they work everybody up um and then there was there's an aspect of this and this is what and here's here's maybe a little bit of spoiler i i might i'm going to issue a few spoiler alerts because i think the audience deserves to have some things that i don't uh yeah ruin for them i we're in like tokyo disney territory there's things that i don't want to say right uh because i think it's fun to just discover this so i'll issue one of those right now it's a small thing but pretty pretty cool. There are, as I said, PA announcements throughout this, like kind of encouraging the flow and like, uh, you know, to go check out the other things, to check out the puppet show. And then also like hyping people up for the cliff diving.

And these PA announcements are done by Trey Parker himself. Oh, that's funny. He put his own voice into it. And I am such a fan of him vocally and i'm such a fan of that thing he does where it's like aware and like cruddy on purpose and being just like uh you know this like full of shit announcer guy and he gets to do that thing that he's so good at and it plays all night every night in this restaurant the part of me that so badly wanted to be in the fries electronics i'm like god damn it this guy did it he did like exactly my dream like creating

a place where his voice is the voice of everything in the place yeah that's awesome and like and it just it adds to the comedy of it because it's um sure, sure. He's got that tongue in cheek thing about the way, the way he pronounces, but also it feels really sincere too. It's just, it's like the awareness that it needs so that you to communicate that. Yes, the place is a little hokey,

but we're all going to just have fun with the hokeyness. Right. And there's stuff like he, there's a big buildup, you know, sometimes the divers just do like a fun show with music and then there's one where there's suspense and the music is a little bit scary and he builds it up and like all right ladies and gentlemen your attention to the cliff lagoon uh the our

divers are about to attempt uh the never before the most dangerous stunt in all the world the bala de canyon and and the silence we need silence please focus everyone and then then the diver gets to like you know he like cracks his knuckles and gets ready and like you know brings everything down for a second everybody's silent uh get your pin drop and then cannonball and then he just does a cannonball that's funny it is like and that's a thing that i think is funny but kids get that is a for everybody that is them writing just good theme parky stuff um so great and then also he's guiding traffic to the other stuff are you on your way to the puppet show you should be it starts in three minutes

and now that's my son's hearing that and now he's starting to tug our sleeves and like yeah are we gonna miss the puppet show i don't want to miss the puppet show yes all right he's becoming like cartman i don't want him to be like cartman in any other capacity but you know what i mean only in that one i wanted to be like cartman in that one moment but without the crimes uh so anyways now we're starting to explore the other stuff oh wait shit i forgot that also while you're even though we're only at the table for like 20 minutes you get so much stuff happening there's the cliff diver shows and you're raising the flag but then also like a monkey walks up a monkey comes up to your table and he's wearing the diver shorts like the divers he it's like communicating that he wants to be a diver too and he asks their name and then he

spells your kid's name in sign language, and then he spells his own name, which is Moko. So we got original characters. Wait, this is a real monkey? No, no, no. It's a guy in a suit. Oh, you know what? It was important to clarify, because with everything I've described, certainly possible

that a real monkey could be on the table. Is it possible they just have a loose monkey in there? I am glad you asked that. Okay. No, it's a guy in a suit, and the suit is'm glad you asked that okay no it's a guided suit and the suit is like it's a get like you know you know that they can pull things off really well and not hokey so you know it's a choice that you can just see the the break from the head to the body um and i this clearly was a tradition of the whole thing i think the monkey would like go get in

fights next to the waterfall and like punch the cliff divers off of the cliff and stuff like that and trey has said he wants to go there sometimes and do shifts as moco sure it could have been him i don't know maybe that was the moco um i think there were balloon animals there was like a i don't even understand this story that like a a female pirate was going around like recruiting pirates. And that was just too confusing to us. And food was coming and like, we'll tell you, we'll talk to you later, pirate. So I don't know.

You can follow the pirate plot line. Now we're getting it. It's like now it's we're in immersive territory. Yeah, really? So then we start walking around. Let's go see what else there is to do. You go into a little town square. There is a

a wishing well i just walked past it listener don't walk past the wishing well i found it in a video later there's a face down at the bottom there's a guy talking to you at the bottom of the wishing well there's so many i missed a lot of things and i was there for a while um then we get into kind of like the main entertainment zone which is home to the puppet show and black bart's cave um the puppet show i will also issue a spoiler alert because uh they don't allow you to film it wow they're really strict about not filming this puppet show i'm not exactly sure why that is but i i don't i want to respect their rules and like i guess they just really want people to come experience it for themselves yeah uh a puppet show one of the things in cartman speed run

i think he doesn't have time to do it i think the cops block his way uh so i got to see it and he didn't uh the puppet show is so much fun it is a little like muppet show variety show hosted by mexican food again the narrator is trey parker and he does a big build-up of uh ladies and gentlemen your host a taco and then it's a mix of pre-recorded stuff that they do and then live performers who are there right operating puppets in this weird way where it's like they're pulling the trigger of a gun like you just see like they just have like a black glove over some kind of black mechanism and they're just pulling it back and forth so they're like they're operating a puppet gun and then you get like little variety show acts with um like there's a chip that does a cliff dive

into a really teeny bowl of salsa and a big build-up to that and then when he hits it goes black and they're screaming and ambulance sounds like he didn't make it and then whatever trey parker narration like oh no so sorry so sorry i had to see that um not only is his voice in it there's like a living rock and a tree and it's their two voices and we are now in country bear jamboree territory this is where i started to get like really emotional wow i knew that they made this restaurant look nicer i knew that they fixed the paint and made the food better yeah i didn't know that this is trey parker's opportunity to do his own

country bear jamboree right so cool again rich celebrities spend money they spend their money on the most inane shit and like brand expansions yeah who is doing anything as cool as setting up their own personal country bear jamboree that's the dream yeah that's the dream they really did it they did it and it's what whenever cartman comes into a lot of money he does stuff like this he bought an amusement park at one point so that he didn't have to ever wait in line he returned his hot dog place right to a fun restaurant they like they did what cartman did yeah it's crazy um so that anyway the show is just so fun my son and i are both laughing like walt disney's dream it works for both of us it's bringing us all together um then they encourage all the audience to say more sopapillas please together. And then from the ceiling of the puppet theater comes a sopapilla swinging on a swing like swinging teddy bears.

Wow, really? Yeah. Yes, they fully do real country bear jamboree stuff. I was going to say up until that point, you could maybe a plausible deniability that that was country bears yes or that they're they're in like there's other versions of shows like they're yeah they're in shucky cheese territory or something i still have yet to find some sort of an interview with them where they just talk about like disneyland and stuff yeah yeah there's so i don't know that they're i don't i'm not gonna guess that they are nerds to the degree that we

are but i think that they took trips that had a big impact on that yeah could they name all of the bear rugs probably not sure i know the full history of figment but i but clearly they locked into that song yes i think they had like really formative disneyland or disney world trips um Disneyland or Disney World trips that like added for all of the first four South Park being like super cynical and super dirty and profane and whatever there is like just sincerity at times to the entertainment and to the storytelling and I feel like I don't know I think they have that theme park gene in them that probably helps I'm just curious yeah about where how far it goes yeah it's clearly pretty far yeah I mean you BS i was thinking about you as soon as i saw this and you having identified that like all right they it felt like a sequel to them doing a clear tribute to journey

into imagination yeah they have they have put money into a swinging teddy barra tribute the journey yeah the journey into imagination specifically because like you know we've seen country bear parodies here and there there's a country bear parody in the critic that i really like and when duke has his own country bear uh like jamboree in his office i don't remember this i forget uh i think he's talking to uh jay's i forget the name of some of the characters uh jay's girlfriend what's her name i don't remember and he's talking about how you know us southern people people all think that we're a certain way or whatever and then he hits a button and then like these uh janky robots come on like where are the bears who sing for duke

doodah and then one of the bears burps and i think duke goes like that dumb belching bear or whatever really funny wow so like there's stuff like that but i don't know the imagination one always hit me as like wait a minute so you've never seen a reference to that anywhere right that is and again it's the thing you had you could only wasn't even in the other parks you had to go to disney world exactly yeah dream finder specific country bears made it into like the popular like the lexicon yeah calling things a jamboree was like kind of you know kind of like you don't have to be a theme park to know that but a theme park fan to know that but now it's called musical jamboree because

they're worried people don't know what a jamboree that's what the new version and that ride in tokyo is called fairy tinkerbells whatever because busy buggies is that what it's called i kind of almost like that one i i just don't understand fairy no i know it's the same thing we really don't understand we don't understand we haven't communicated the tinkerbell is a fair like superhero avengers campus yeah i guess they just do some testing and there's like five percent of the audience doesn't know it so they're like we can't take any chances finding nemo parentheses fish submarine voyage yeah that it does feel like the way it's going where you're like it's called country musical jamboree now really does it have to be called that matterhorn mountain with a monster inside

right matterhorn mountain like a thing you can see on earth for real mountain is real rocks but not really right um alice jay sherman's girlfriend is alice oh thank god thank you i was checking just to make sure it wasn't helen oh yeah she's pretty well from early morning workouts that need a boost to late night drives that need vibes a good playlist can help you make the most out of your everyday. And when it comes to everyday spending, you can count on the PC Insider's World Elite Mastercard to help you earn the most PC Optimum points everywhere you shop. With the best playlists, you never miss a good song. With this card, you never miss out on getting the most points on everyday purchases.

The PC Insider's World Elite Mastercard, the card for living unlimited. Conditions apply to all benefits. Visit PCFinancial.ca for details yeah um anyways also the sopapilla which it was as i said the shining part of the meal the sopapilla being the beauty of the show was so the glamorous the miss piggy of this was so perfect and it also came right after another one that's like uh the beef combo and the beef combo just like looked like what the food really looks like yeah it's just done very like it's just like very mundane kind of brown food and it kind of like couldn't figure out anything funny to do and that felt like their comment on like kind of the plainness of the food sure but the sopapilla is the star of the show. The elegant sopapilla.

I was so excited in this moment. My son is having so much fun. I am like, I just, I'm so high on how well they pulled this off. And the personal touches from them. And then I get to walk a couple of feet and go into Black Bart's Cave. Again, I've never been in this place before. I didn't grow up with black bart's cave why am i tearing up at the site of black bart's cave all i know this from is an episode

of south park where it's said really flippantly by the worst child on earth well black bart's cave scary and he goes through it and it specifically looks terrible it's like a very as they portray it on the show it's an almost empty room with two skeletons lying on the ground and yet just the mythology of this and the build-up and that we are like you know in another part of the country in a place we've never been uh and i don't know maybe the uh maybe the high elevation is making me more misty or something too i don't know what it is but either way i swear i tear up in a way that I haven't maybe for a themed experience since like open,

like opening day galaxy's edge where they were all applauding as we were coming in or being in Disney sea and seeing the volcano for the first time. Black Bart's cave made me feel that way. And now I'm like dashing in there and dragging my son and missing the fact that it's very dark and he's afraid of dark places and there's signs that say like maybe too scary for youngins and he's like what is this i'm like don't worry about it's gonna be fun and then aaron has to go up and like no scott no he is like this is clearly too scared he's scared and he's not even in it yet okay fine sorry i am so just determined to get into viper's cave i have blinders on so he is seized back to

the front of the line i go in at myself boy is this not disappointing this is like it's like the snow white ride it's like a it's like a the way those fantasyland rides are kind of like claustrophobic like the way like i forget which one is more like cavern and you're just like going through little turns and it's really creepy well there's the mine and stuff or it's a little bit and you know actually you know what it starts a little bit snow white and like uh dwarves mine and all that and then it becomes like mr toad because they had they had to do a little bit of like figuring out okay the people who thought of this did not do any math about what Black Bart is, but we have to.

Because, wait, hang on. He's like, is he a pirate or is he an Old West guy? And if he's an Old West guy, then why does he have a cave? It was too many mythologies at once. And I think they did a little clarification, but I think Trey Parker, they put like the head of south park story on this like the guy who conceives of the stories for the video games right he is working out the story of black bart's cave and i think trey ultimately encouraged like i think it is just 10 things all at once i think let's just like lay

into the confusion and that yeah you go into an it's an old west guys cave but then there's a dragon in it and you go into the dragon's mouth and it has a beating heart so what like you sense that they were just like i don't know just like yeah kitchen sink throw it all in whatever they kind of seed the idea that like black part is like hiding his treasure and putting up fake booby traps to stop you from going in to get it and like so there's like jump scares which i'm glad my son got out of there but the jump scares are fake and set up by black bart so you don't get his treasure and you keep hearing like full throttle trey parker voice as things pop up and like there's no treasure in here turn back and and then uh you get to the treasure and it is like it's it's very pirates and there's this wonderful

shimmery light and it's gold and glowy everywhere so it's like coins and gold bars but then also a 70s evil kenevil lunchbox so it's like a 70s child's idea of what the ultimate treasure would be that's funny but then it starts sailing say your prayers varmint you're done for and then you go into a very mr toad hell dragon's mouth i don't again they've like they've already done their pirates in their mexico pavilion and now there's like a tiny walkthrough that's like a fantasy land ride wow i am just so lit up um and then like all right well i guess we're wrapping up and it's almost uh bedtime so we better get out of here wait what's up those stairs giant arcade still an arcade to go and and we walk up the stairs okay here's arcade and a shooting gallery and a root beer bar whoa now i'm interested he's crying he's crying he's tearing up just sobbing

root beer on tap what a good idea for kids that's awesome and they don't get to go to bar but i always love that i like the like i i feel like i don't ever drink root beer but i romanticize the idea of it like i wish it was more like i imagine what it could you know where it's big and frosty and cold mugs yeah i uh like do either of you get i mean i don't know you get like root beer at restaurants i guess but he pours root beer in a cereal every morning i love it on tap yeah i love like real tapped root beer where are you where else are you getting tapped root i i don't know you see it so rarely i feel like maybe knots or like places maybe somewhere yeah uh that do root beer float do like a lot of root beer float floats in a frosty mug there was an a and w in wood field and i feel like, I don't, I'm trying to remember.

In my mind, they had that, but maybe it wasn't. Maybe it was shitty. I think I was driving from Ithaca to Pennsylvania once and I pulled into an A&W.

I went inside and it was just like, It was bad. Unlimited. No, well, the food was nothing. Yeah.

But they had a keg of root beer and they gave you a frosty mug. Ooh, a keg. And you did a keg stand on it they had a keg of root beer, and they gave you a frosty mug. Ooh, a keg. And you did a keg stand on it? Doing a keg stand on the sugar root beer. Yeah. I'm thinking, like, well, you know what? The old video game Tapper that factors into Wreck-It Ralph.

Oh, yeah. That we were talking about. Is that beer or is it root beer? Do they make it root beer because it's for kids? Probably, don't know the answer i'm not entirely yeah i'm not entirely sure but i always like i i guess i've never thought about this before that like you know you can't drink i didn't want to drink beer when i was a kid but i love the idea of like kegs wood going up to a bar saloon style like i wanted like the 1910s idea and that a guy with a with a twirling mustache and a bowler hat would serve it to me like root beer as the in-between of like it's like a

i don't know i don't know like like a bar that a child is allowed to be at that also feels like the old west yeah maybe huckleberry hound is around he's on the that absolutely works yes the cowboys of moom mesa did not drink alcohol but they certainly sidled up to a bar or two in their day did they make a point of being uh straight at were they specifically sober and i don't know if there was any beer in the world moom mesa was a dry mesa on their uh hands if you're wondering this is a question i guess in a lot of uh cinematic universes do they have alcohol which is ant it's very satisfying when it's answered like star wars and then when you maybe get to go experience it to some extent for yourself i mean everyone

i don't know everyone has a different answer i don't know we could go through them quickly but the mcu does but it's they you know tony stark was drunk in one scene in iron man 2 okay that was as close as they were getting to his demon in a bottle is there a prominent like and i'm not talking about like getting a beer on earth in the mcu which is like one of the planets have a drink is there a prominent mcu like weird space drink oh that's a good question i don't know that off the top of my head to invent one yeah i mean it's like zandar is there some sort of zandarian drink maybe trying to remember i mean star trek there's romulan ale that's the big one that's it's an

illegal drink i don't know if it's been made legal in other future Star Treks, or I should say, recent Star Trek. Picard has a winery. Picard has a winery, but wine is legal. Yeah. But Romulan ale is like absinthe or something. Oh, I see. Oh, that's kind of exciting. Sometimes somebody will pull it out behind, like, I got a little of this.

Has there ever been a physical place, like the Vegas Star Trek experience, where you could get Romulan ale? Do we know? I think you could get it at the Star Trek experience. Wow. wow wow but i don't know if there's a chance what happens in vegas stays in vegas i want my hands on some romulan ale i really really want to go on a star trek cruise or finally go to start the big star trek con in vegas in august i don't know that i'll do it this year but it's never occurred to me that you would go on a star trek cruise i mean i remember your enthusiasm similar to mine in this episode when we talked about the star trek cruise but i don't think i don't think i'd thought through that you kind of want to do it i do want

to do it yeah it's all the oldest character actors are there mike's recipe for good party as we know yeah free alcohol and possible presence of armin shimmer right i think he'll be at both i think he's doing the rounds so yeah yeah for sure well they have to serve some equivalent of romulan ale you would have to imagine yeah so right maybe it's not like paramount approved necessarily but someone is is doing it someone is making romulan ale thank god when paramount's away the cats will play paramount though i do think licensed an official picard winery wine at some point oh well that'd be worth i should try that this is a whole area i guess the star trek star trek beverages we should see if we could get our

hands on them do some taste tests sure that's that sounds like an episode to me yeah um anyway at this point i was i thought i was wrapping it. And when I just saw that there was a root beer bar, I was like, get another drink. Here we go. And I went and I got that old Diablo. Oh, yeah. And I had a bunch of fun with skeeball. And it was just like well-chosen arcade games. And there was a shooting gallery, which was having only done the first shooting gallery of my life several days prior.

I've just never really done them. Like kind of old style shooting galleries where there's a little set and you activate little effects. And I discovered in this one, which I'll get into in a future episode, how precise they are and how bad I was at them. So then several days later, I'm in the Casa Bonita one. It's very forgiving. Right. They just want you to turn on all the stuff. Sure. one it's very forgiving right they just want you to like turn on all the stuff like this you know

there's like a there's like a big bear and a sombrero and like you know snakes you can make kiss and then a skunk that spins around and sprays it has spray in it that's great beyond like you know my deep down in the list of cool things about this one of the coolest shooting galleries i've ever seen next to the root beer bar this whole zone was so charming and then i saw like an outhouse door that says knock first and i was like that's a clue that means i'm supposed to knock and then i told my son to do it and i'm like i bet i know where this is going and quickly there were big farts and poop sounds and a guy saying oh i'm gonna be a while and this is the most up my four-year-old's alley he has lit up ever since he's been saying let's play knock on doors and we have to respond

with poop or fart sounds so that stayed with he took so many things back home with him from this situation um we're just like truly in a day when we round that other corner this is where it starts to click in like i think over the course of really we've done a lot of it this year because this year we've talked about bullwinkles and rainforest cafe and all the stuff in the city walk orlando saga and this idea of like the restaurant that's so huge that it has like twists and turns and corners and that's up there and that and you can't possibly do it in one visit i feel like you know so often these things get worn down and like you know bought out by something else and it gets shittier and like the dream of what it was like wow there's

five rooms and all this stuff uh this is like the most i've ever experienced this modern day and certainly the gotta be the only one that is like new in 2021 or whenever i think it went opened last year i guess actually to the public um but like at the height of its power possibly yes it is like that what we're describing this genre of restaurant all reached the height of its power in like 1983 right with the exception of this place this is the only one that is at its best right now right it's so cool it's everything we want it's the detail like it's all this the details and the extra shit that if a computer were to crunch numbers is superfluous yes this is the whole thing to go does how does that help the bottom line actually it might specifically really hurt the bottom line and i understand at some point the need to be

profitable and to run a business that makes sense i don't care about that but yeah go ahead well yeah i i i don't care about i shouldn't care about it i just i understand the yes i understand on some level the idea that you would start a restaurant and want to make money on it and it the that's why i think we've run into this before the only way we can have these places that we want is if they are going to lose money is if they are going to be big financial disasters you probably god bless these guys for being willing and seemingly excited to set up a big financial disaster. I saw, too, that, like, so the weights, it kind of makes sense now, learning about the quality of the food, that rather than the weight staff relying on tips, everyone's just making $30 an hour. Yes, yeah.

They just, like, really up to the standard of what everybody makes which yeah which helps the speed of everything and that's great and uh they were kind of retained the staff when they bought it and everybody who was still on board when covet hit uh they kept them employed and they just like you kept them on the payroll and sent them to like volunteer and go to soup kitchens and like uh yeah yeah like like places that help the needy so yeah they like they employed everybody's up their salaries sent them out to do charity work uh cool great um so so that aspect of it too they're like they're treating people right um at this point the night actually is winding down we got to put the kiddo

to bed how long have you been here two hours and we could have easily we were saying like at least one more i think there's i think there's possibly a four hour version of being in this place i don't think that would be a stretch at all because then there's entire rooms that i missed if you don't do the cliffside dining you probably end up seating sitting in a whole area that i just ran through really fast which was like you're in a mine and there's explosions that go off and there's a love tester down there there's a fortune telling prospector named a sayer joe and i don't know what he is but i bet if i put money into him he might talk with trey parker's voice too probably uh uh like you also part of the dream of this kind of restaurant we've we've

described in like pine and that we've never gotten to go to is the possibility of getting lost and i did get lost i couldn't find aaron i don't know where they went this is exactly what a restaurant big enough that an adult can legitimately get lost in there they pulled it off they did it here i didn't get to see Sorcero the Magician. I don't know what the hell that is. I missed that there is a place to take a picture with Cartman that they gave him permanently. Whoa, really? The booth where he ordered sopapias.

That just now has a big, weird Cartman at it. And that's kind of the only real South Park nod. I think they were very spare. They put their own voice in but it's like feels very organic to the experience they didn't make it like subtly south park the restaurant right and i appreciate that about it i think there's somewhere where you can find man bear pig but i didn't find that either stuff i missed i barely saw like a thing something you put money into and a bunch of like puppet monkeys dance around i barely got to see the museum there is so much i've never seen a restaurant with this much stuff to do i think you're

underselling it even calling it a restaurant it's like an indoor theme park it is the disneyland of mexican restaurants they absolutely earned it um i also i appreciate that they didn't like you know again that i don't that i don't think these guys are that crass and their need to like make money at every turn they didn't like fill it with like south park merch i was like will this be then will you get to the end and it's south park merch instead you get to the mercato you get to this like wonderfully rendered gift shop and the it's so many items with the logo on it and boy is it a great logo it's a beautiful website i love everything about just like perfect 70s aesthetic i've never spent more a gift shop in my entire life i bought so much stuff i got the flag uh uh i bought i bought a bar mat for my friend i bought

uh shirts a an old banner like very like 70s theme park style or like pennant I guess that's what I meant and for you gentlemen got a couple of Costa Bonita shot glasses of the bubble wrap there you are

cause these like they're kind of like warm yellow adobe style yeah really cool the tower of the restaurant is in the logo and it looks old i yeah yeah it feels very 70s but it's made nicely thank you so much you're welcome even though and i made the assessment in the moment in the past mike you have been flummoxed by why somebody would have a shot glass in the home because you're not really doing shots at home you said but i still made the calculation that you might be able to get your head around it well you don't want to on this side if you want to have

a precise pour yes yeah exactly it's a perfect yes if you want exactly a one shot drink uh yeah taffer approved don't overplay if you want to not over pour one in it's usually one and a half tablespoons or two tablespoons so you could use it for like uh measuring coffee too coffee beans oh those like grounds or coffee yeah yeah that's true are you relieved to hear that there are not there are many things that you can do that aren't doing a dreadful shot in the comfort of your own home? I am relieved to hear that, yes. Many uses, you see. Yes.

You could bathe your daughter with it. You could also measure out, if you want to drink at home, you measure out a shot poured over ice or poured in a glass. He was saying, yes, exactly, measuring, yes, that's true. No need to do the shot act. Did I do a shot in the last six months? I feel like I did, and I can't remember where. I feel like I did, but I can't remember why. Well, that means the shot worked, baby.

I guess so, yeah. Well, I can also just make, I can make this also like an upside down like hat for one of my plushes. That's very good. Yes. Well, or, and I hate to summon more drunkenness in your home, but you could put it over the head of party animal Michelangelo. Party Angelo is cool.

Or Party Angelo, as I call him, and make it look like it's kind of like a lampshade over his head. Well, it would work for my quarter scale Michelangelo because he's this big. And it would work. Yeah. Perfect fit. I bought guitars for all my quarter scale turtles you bought separate guitars really yeah because you like fender will make like a tiny quarter scale guitar oh so you sized out like what will match exactly exactly you bought

special guitars for your four special guys that's correct and that now that's the second round of turtles that have guitars because i have of course the quarter scale coming out of our shells turtles as well that came with their instruments okay okay yeah yeah but in this case you had to make them make them musicians exactly uh that's nice uh um okay well yeah enjoy those i'm just i just wanted to have the logo in my house a lot and have the memories of this place a lot again i just like if it's not clear enough i was so blown away by this place i felt exactly like cardman after the speed run after he himself did the cliff dive just in an absolute daze was it worth it totally i 100 there i didn't want to leave i said goodbye wistfully sadly like i was leaving disney world

as did my son none of us wanted to leave i'm dying to go back if i could figure out a way a good way to go back and sort of as we were alluding to it's okay this place i think what's so beautiful about it it's like the dream of one crazy guy and what happens to the dream of one crazy guy corporations by it just like gets run into the ground by some bland weird entity and it gets worse and worse until it becomes silly and not what it used to be this is like the only scenario i've ever seen where it was started by one crazy guy and then two crazier guys right did something even crazier with it uh i really commend them for it and also for as you were saying it's like

it's in the tarantino zone celebrities look everybody's trying to be an entrepreneur everybody's trying to like expand their brand portfolio and it's all with a bunch of boring shit because everybody just slaps their names on and i'm sorry i don't want to say fighting words at the end of an episode here but things like tequilas everybody just slaps their names on couple guys's tequila so i agree with you post casamigos yeah yeah some people just slap their names on something copying the roguish act of two renegades riding through the countryside right perfectly synced up on the coolest uh hogs you've ever seen it's by the way all what we're talking about here is out

of control every single person has a caw robert downey jr has a coffee dolly parton announced a new wine like it every single person of any prominence now has some grift yeah that they're in and there's always been that but it used to be like cheesy it used to be like corny that ed mcmahon had some item now we like now we want it we celebrate it we like you know we like we we love hustle and we and like some of these things are fine but usually it's a bunch of shit and it's all the way down it's worst it's like celebrities all like doing ads for crypto and i don't want to get on a high horse about this, but I was just thinking of the juxtaposition of like today, what we encourage, if you made your money with creative stuff,

you were then supposed to put a bunch of money and make a bunch more money on, on just like worthless landfill crap. Right. That is the, that's, that's the idea. It's what we encourage. It's what we are dying to get all of our top stars to do in this

case these guys like that they did something that so reflects who they are that is like giving back in a way yes it's for profit you got to pay a bunch of money to go there but it feels like they were like trying to retain the magic of the denver that they grew up with it completely reflects who they are creatively they didn't just slap their name on something and go to go like uh make a bunch more money so they can invest more money in some other crap i'm just like it's just cool it's really cool what they did in a way that i'd like who does in this area what famous people do anything this cool yeah if you're going to be a millionaire i guess in this case they're probably billionaires you may at least be eccentric it's the company the company is valued at a billion at least and that's only gonna well

i take my yeah they're not that's what's insane yeah like yeah well this is no nothing for them what's that this is nothing for them yeah just an easy an easy 40 mil a lark an eccentric lark but like yeah tarantino's rescued two uh movie theaters at this point also there is i want to say like you know uh good on them but like a team of like 25 30 filmmakers saved the westwood like historic movie theater and that's good that's cool that's good but it's like well there's there's 30 of you there's one of him he rescued too i mean what's going on yeah i mean yeah my question is when is jason reitman gonna start saving some chuck e cheese Cheese's. On his own. Yes. With no other. Maybe Gil Keenan can help him out. But other than that, yes.

Like, hey, we know he loves his 80s stuff. We're trying to bring back the 80s in his child. Put your money where your mouth is and save a lot of those robots. I'll give him credit because he does a lot of those stage reading of scripts at LACMA, at the art museum. And I believe tickets for those that he's usually fundingie cheeses yeah that's the only end of that question that sentence that i was gonna say funding the art

museum but i'm sure they get to allocate some uh boring you know he should pay to flip that art museum into a revived chuckie cheese and showbiz pizza i agree put it all together and bullwinkles only then will i be happy mr right man right i i will say something very chunky cheesy at lachma there is an art piece that is just a boulder and you can walk under the boulder i've seen the boulder that's pretty cool yeah big rock yeah george lucas is doing this i mean he's doing the museum but that you know what i'm talking about this giant museum that's being built in la uh-huh i don't know what's in it though you've seen the picture though you guess it's crazy like google it if you don't it's crazy looking and it's huge

and he i think he's financing the whole thing himself was that supposed to go in chicago it was supposed to go to chicago and then i'm supposed to go in san francisco i think but is that gonna have a perma cantina band i i i don't think it will but it's big enough to have something fun in it i'm sure something no it's gonna be good something is gonna be cool so he is using his bill yeah he is yes it is possible i've just started to think that like generationally yeah because like yes a spielberg or lucas have like put money back yes back into the arts or like say yeah i don't know like uh yeah i don't know like saving things that are important to them that makes it but i was i'm like when have you seen in the last decade it feels like i know i don't yeah people spending

their their creative earned money on something really cool doesn't really happen and here's another thing i was thinking about. Okay, think about this. These guys got very, very rich from animation. And now they have spent a bunch of money on a really risky enterprise. A themed enterprise that is partially to recreate the little town that they grew up in and to bring back some of the spirit of the town that they grew up in using their cartoon money. Does that sound familiar?

Who else did something like that? Maybe a gentleman named Walt fucking Disney. Maybe that's who did that. That's true. Maybe these guys are the only people following in walt fucking disney's footsteps you have to have a insanely rich person that's in charge of all their money that just forces something crazy and i'll say this also disney set i don't know where themed entertainment would be if the precedent wasn't set by walt disney to put so much extra crap in disneyland

and i mean like just performers and and details and everything because yes that they got every bit of it right and you turn a corner and there's this thing over here and wow i've never i've been here 10 times and i've never seen that and i think maybe i've said this before where it's like if that hadn't happened if the bar hadn't been set there i don't know that we'd ever have anything else approaching it true yeah you're right he really yeah disney the only what comes before disney is like carnivals and coney island and stuff and and then i guess you you have to include like the stuff that inspired him uh tivoli gardens and knots was on its way before him but not fully what it became but yeah essentially not the first

out of the gate but like really the first modern theme park in a way and yeah you're right if they hadn't set the bar there then we would we would allow theme parks to be much more rinky-dink much gruttier well there's there's the whole talk right now of because of this union agreement as disney have you seen this where disney is canceling live performances in the park dr strange canceled this that's why that went away well that's what people are speculating but some people are saying dr strange those performers were agva which was a contract that was already in place sure but it could be canceling live entertainment to get uh quarterly profits like quarterly revenue in shape they canceled club pixar which is like something that was supposed to run for all summer and then they canceled a couple other things too

so it's like yeah like like all that stuff is extra stuff they don't need to be doing but there's still enough at disneyland that's extra yeah i'm just saying like you start out up here so when like they start taking things away and taking things away and they have taken things away in the last so many years but it's just like well they started out here yeah so it's still it's still pretty great even though they start canceling stuff that's all the fun extras you're bringing me back to casa bonita in a way because yeah look the the first things to go are live performers and you know the people with like special skills or just who are really fun to watch who make the place special casa bonita is a new place i was there for two hours and what did i see bunch of cliff

divers puppet show live performers a monkey and a monkey trainer came up to my table uh i didn't even get to see sorcerer whatever sorcerer is uh i mean that that's like part of it there is there is a current ralph brennan's jazz kitchen that like kept one thing that kept the cliff divers but then it's only on fridays yeah and it looks like shit looks like a fucking crate and barrel now like there is a version where cosmo nita comes back and it looks like shit. It looks like a fucking crate and barrel now. Like there is a version where Cosmita comes back and it is like, it is just a little fun nod that we like sort of nod to that. This place was fun instead of making it twice as fun as it was before.

What I'm saying is Trey and Matt did a better job than the modern Walt Disney company. This is the best thing I've done for the show in a couple years one of the best things ever we've been doing this for a while this is one of the most excited i've ever been about anything i'm just sorry that it wasn't with you guys i'm sorry it was a little solo mission but if you can figure it out get there i know we'll try go it is such a special thing and so neat that it can happen that we don't need to rely on our gods at disney and universal to deign to do something cool for us that these guys were willing to to waste a ton of money

they described them so they said you have to be as rich as us and as stupid as us to get something like this done and i thank them for their stupidity uh god bless you casa bonita wow um and i look forward to what is apparently a documentary coming by by the end of the year casa bonita mia more in which they go into this process and i i want to see every i want to know everything about how they put this together because it the word i said it as soon as i walked out as soon as I left the dim hues of the restaurant and was harshly let out into the still bright Colorado sun. It's like, it's still light. You're kidding. And the first thing out of my mouth was triumph.

This is a triumph. And how great does it feel to see a new triumph in themed entertainment in 2024? It sounds closer to Meow Wolf in execution. Yes, that it's like off the grid, that the money comes from a weird place, that it is in Denver. Now, I didn't get to do that. I did not go to Convergence Station,

which is the Denver outpost. I did experience the Meow Wolf ride at Elitch Gardens. Oh, right. And I believe the plan is to talk about that on the second gate we're going to talk about elitch gardens soon elitch gardens is another thing you can do in denver but let's end on a positive note let's make it a hard split god bless you guys thank you for making this great place for denver and for america and for the world wow you survived podcast the ride phew uh uh i need an el diablo now after that uh for three bonus episodes every month check out podcast the red the second gate or get one more bonus episode on our vip tier club three you will find all of that at patreon.com

slash podcast the ride including i think elitch gardens although i'm gonna have to i mean like could be main i don't it's it's buckle up for elitch gardens we can always change if we need to something listeners told me to buckle up part of the process was like i had booked a trip and then like well i guess i can't do casa bonita and well i can still do Elitch gardens and people went out of their way. Listeners went out of their way to communicate. Don't do that. If you can't get into Casa Bonita, don't just go to Elitch gardens.

And, uh, thank God it works. Thank you, Joe Carnegie. Uh, thank you, Landon.

And thank you listeners. Get on that list. If you didn't do it at the top of the show, do it now. You guys too. You know what? Mike, do it. Figure it out. I'll get to Denver later. I't do it at the top of the show do it now you guys too you know what Mike do it figure out how to get to Denver later I'll do it go to the website let's get it done okay all right forever

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