Top 7 Mistakes Cancun Travelers Make At Resort Breakfast Buffets

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Walking into a massive all-inclusive breakfast buffet in Cancun is one of the absolute best parts of a tropical vacation. You have endless trays of hot chilaquiles, fresh tropical fruit, custom omelet stations, and bottomless mimosas waiting for you before you even hit the beach.

However, when you put hundreds of hungry, half-awake tourists into a single dining room, things can get chaotic fast. If you want to get the best food, avoid the morning stress, and keep your fellow travelers happy, you need a solid game plan. Here are the top 7 mistakes Cancun travelers make at resort breakfast buffets and how to easily avoid them.

1. Walking In During The 9:00 AM Rush Hour

Nobody wants to set an early alarm on vacation, which means almost every guest at the resort rolls out of bed at the exact same time. If you stroll down to the restaurant between 8:30 AM and 9:30 AM, you are walking straight into peak morning madness. You will face long waits for a table, picked-over food trays, and crowded aisles.

To beat the rush, you need to play the edges of the clock. Show up early between 7:00 AM and 8:00 AM when the dining room is quiet, the coffee is piping hot, and the pastries are fresh out of the oven. If you prefer to sleep in, wait until after 10:00 AM when the early birds have already claimed their pool chairs and the buffet turns into a relaxed, uncrowded brunch.

2. Grabbing A Plate Immediately Without Doing A Lap

The biggest rookie move you can make at a mega-resort is picking up a plate the second you step inside the entrance. Cancun resort buffets are massive, and the best stations are almost always tucked away in the back corners.

If you start loading up at the very 1st table you see, you will fill your plate with basic scrambled eggs, toast, and hash browns before you even realize there is a made-to-order taco bar, a fresh juice blend station, and a hot churro cart on the other side of the room. Leave your hands empty and take a quick 2-minute lap around the entire floor 1st. Spot the hidden gems, figure out what actually looks fresh, and then grab a plate.

3. Losing Your Patience At The Omelet Station

The custom egg and omelet grill is easily the busiest bottleneck in the entire restaurant. Watching 1 chef flip 6 different pans at the same time is impressive, but it guarantees a line during the morning rush.

Do not be the traveler who tries to bypass the line by shouting “just 2 fried eggs” over someone else’s shoulder, and do not crowd the person standing in front of you. Everyone is waiting for their custom order. Give people their personal space, figure out your toppings before you reach the front, and throw a quick smile or thank you to the cook working over a hot grill all morning.

4. Skipping The Double Hand Wash

When hundreds of guests are grabbing the exact same serving spoons and metal tongs for 4 hours straight, hygiene becomes a massive deal. First, never use your bare hands to grab a roll or a piece of bacon off a tray, and never mix up the serving utensils between different dishes. Using the meat tongs to grab a cheese danish is a nightmare for vegetarians and guests with severe food allergies.

More importantly, you need to practice the double hand wash. Most travelers wash their hands before entering the restaurant, grab the communal buffet tongs that 200 other people just touched, and immediately sit down to eat toast and fruit with their bare fingers. Wash or sanitize your hands before you go up to the buffet, and hit the hand sanitizer a 2nd time the moment you sit back down at your table before you actually touch your food.

5. Showing Up In A Bikini

You are obviously heading straight to the pool or the ocean right after you eat, but you still have to respect the restaurant rules. Even the most laid-back beach resorts in Cancun enforce a basic morning dress code, and showing up in a tiny bikini or shirtless is a guaranteed way to get turned away by the host.

Before you head to breakfast, make sure your swimwear is completely dry and throw on proper cover-ups. Guys need a t-shirt or tank top along with shorts and sandals, while women should wear a sundress, shorts, or a proper beach cover-up over their suits. Nobody wants to sit down on a cushioned dining chair that was just soaked by the previous guest.

6. Leaving Zero Tip On The Table

A lot of travelers assume that because they are serving their own food at a buffet, tipping is not necessary. While your package is all-inclusive, the dining room servers are still working nonstop behind the scenes to keep your morning running smoothly.

They are brewing fresh pots of coffee, pouring fresh-squeezed orange juice, bringing out celebratory mimosas, and constantly clearing stacks of dirty plates off your table so you have room for your 2nd trip. Leaving a couple dollars, or 20 – 40 Mexican pesos, on the table when you finish is a small gesture that goes a very long way for the hardworking staff.

7.Going To The Buffet When You Have A Cold

Catching a bug or waking up with a sore throat and a cough on vacation is terrible luck, but dragging those symptoms into a crowded buffet is the fastest way to get the rest of the resort sick. Between coughing near open food stations and touching shared serving spoons, a simple cold can rip through a hotel in days.

If you wake up feeling under the weather, stay in your room and rest. Almost every all-inclusive resort in Cancun includes 24-hour room service right in your nightly rate. Order a hot pot of coffee, fresh fruit, and chilaquiles straight to your bed, or have a healthy travel partner bring a plate up to your room so you can recover without sharing your germs.