Casa Bonita

For those of you who are not familiar with Casa Bonita I think it is the 15th Wonder of the World. It has this distinction for several reasons. It is, quite possibly, the largest, gaudiest, cheesiest restaurant in the world. It has got to have some of the worst food (taste and nutritionally). It is in a really scary part of town and, best of all, even on a Monday night at 7:00 we still had to wait in a Disneyland kind of line for almost an hour to get our cafeteria trays. I have gone there many times since I was a youngster and it is a lot of fun to go there now with the kids.

It is 52,000 sq/ft (3 football fields). They did not have any plans when they built it - we learned this while winding our way like cattle going to slaughter in the line. It is in the corner of a large strip center - the whole experience is rather surreal. It was featured in an episode of South Park - Danny did you see it? There is a small waterfall inside where they do skits involving a gorilla, Black Bart, juggling and cliff diving. All you can eat sopapillas and waking up with a stomachache at 2:20am.

Needless to say we had a lot of fun until Kylie spent all her tokens on the crane game without winning and determined it was now "the worst night ever!" We wandered our way around visiting Black Bart's cave, the mine shaft, the lower caverns with stalactites and stalagmites, the old theater room where they used to do magic shows, visited the treasure chest on the way out and prayed we wouldn't get mugged in the parking lot since it was getting rather late. We made it home safely and look forward to doing it again next year!