Chanhassen Dinner Theatres

Chanhassen Dinner Theatres' founders, Herbert and Carolyn Bloomberg, designed and constructed their 90,000 square foot entertainment complex where once stood a cornfield, some distance out of the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. The Bloomberg's interest in owning a theatre blossomed in 1965, when the couple was building a new home for the Old Log Theater in Excelsior. Herb and Carol combined their talents along with their love for live theatre and decided to move forward with a building plan of their own. This was risky. Not only was the theatre located 30 minutes from downtown Minneapolis, but Bloomberg was opening a restaurant in combination, a venture subject to a high mortality rate even by today's standards. Bloomberg's theatre opened on October 11, 1968, with How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Bloomberg's initial vision to bring dinner theatre to a country cornfield has given skeptics opportunity to eat plenty of crow over the years. Today, Chanhassen is the nation's largest professional dinner theatre, and the largest privately owned restaurant in the state of Minnesota. Since Chanhassen Dinner Theatres opened, nearly 220 plays have been produced and played to more than 10 million guests.