It was a pain in the ass to make. But the vegetarian raved about it, so maybe we got some payoff.
Tonight the family celebrated my niece X’s 9th birthday at...wait for it...Casa Bonita! (At least it wasn’t Chuck E. Cheese.)
Frere and I regularly hosted our birthday parties at Casa Bonita when we were small (through, like, 1985 when Celebrity Sports Center and its sweet-ass water slides became the venue of choice). For all the years we held our “Destination: Casa Bonita” parties, Frere and I and all our little friends thought it was great and so much fun.
Frere’s children are just as enamored of Casa Bonita as Frere and I were as kids, so I’ve been back a few times as an adult. My niece Fine, who is now 14, had birthday parties there as a kidlet. I’ve gone with out-of-town guests who come thinking it’s something they want to see (they are frequently disappointed, though it’s a disappointment you can laugh through).
On the whole, Casa Bonita is remarkably unchanged from 25 years ago: the strolling mariachi band, the waiter-summoning flags on the tables, the terrible food, the cowboy cliff divers, the rampaging gorilla, who gave me a thrill tonight as he dashed past me and Handsome on the bridge.
Nowadays, I don’t really dig on skee ball. (I totally used to.) A glow-in-the-dark necklace doesn’t make my week. (It totally used to.) And the joint is located in a strip mall, people. It’s impossibly gaudy. The food has always been bad beyond belief.
But the kids were gleeful and adventurous, and even Handsome and I giggled our way through Black Bart’s cave before we left.
Plus, we scored the pink party pavilion at the top of the ramp -- remember the ramps? -- all to ourselves.
Pretty sweet.
Daddo enjoying the festivities
Photo credit: The Preferred Daughter
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