Casa Bonita opening fall and holiday reservations on July 13th

If you’d like your family’s Thanksgiving tradition to involve a 30-foot waterfall, cliff divers and unlimited sopapillas instead of Grandma’s dry turkey, mark your calendar: Casa Bonita will open reservations for dates Sept. 8 through Jan. 10 starting Monday, July 13 at 9 a.m. The window covers every major holiday slot on the calendar, including the weeks around Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s — though the Lakewood institution is closed on Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Founders Club members get first dibs when the reservation portal opens at 9 a.m., but general availability should follow. If the past is any indication, don’t dawdle — when Casa Bonita first launched its reservation system on Mexican Independence Day in September 2024, every slot for two months was gone within hours. While it’s not quite as tough to get a reservation these days, it’s still worth paying attention to release dates.

The 52,000-square-foot pink palace at 6715 W. Colfax Ave. remains reservation-only with no walk-ins, and parties are capped at 10 guests. Current reservations run through Sept. 6, so the new batch picks up almost immediately after. Hours are Tuesday through Wednesday from 4 to 10:30 p.m. and Thursday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to close. Each reservation includes an entree, chips and salsa, a soft drink and a round of the legendary honey-drizzled sopapillas, plus access to the cliff divers, puppet shows, live music and all the other chaos that’s kept Coloradans lining up since March 1974.

If you don’t see the dates you want on Monday morning, Casa Bonita says to keep checking back, as availability changes regularly. And if you’re planning a holiday dinner there, just know you’ll have to explain to your out-of-state relatives why their Christmas meal involves a gorilla and a man doing a belly flop off a cliff into a pool — which, honestly, is the most Colorado sentence ever written.