Woman Camps Out at Golden Corral Buffet for 12 Hours Straight

She begins her video with a recording of the Golden Corral’s exterior taken from the parking lot. A text overlay details the nature of her mission at the discount buffet chain: “Seeing how long it takes to get kicked out of Golden Corral Buffett”

The price of this journey? $12.52, without tip, according to a crumpled receipt Madison shows off in the video. She immediately begins to narrate her experience at the chain, filled with plenty of smash cuts of her stuffing her face.

“Even though there was hair in it the cotton candy cake was my favorite I literally ate half of it by myself,” she says, showing the hair she found inside a slice of the cake along with footage of the half-eaten cake on the buffet line she consumed.

That was just the first leg of her adventure, however, as she says that once the breakfast items were cleared after about 2 1/2 hours (it appears she took a few bites out of an egg omelette as well) it was time for her to conquer lunch, which was served at 11 am. However, after she got up to fill her plates, Madison noticed that her cup, which was used to refill for beverages, was cleared.

“I got up to get lunch food and when I came back to my table they took away my drink and silverware but I sat down and ate anyway,” Madison narrates, before the video cuts to footage of her chomping away at something, quickly followed by a conversation with her and a Golden Corral employee.

She asked to see if she had to pay for lunch as well, but she was told that guests only needed to pay once for the day and they could eat and drink as much as they wanted while they were there.

Periodically throughout the video, Madison shows off her watch, which she set a timer on when she began her Golden Corral session, along with some of the things she got for lunch, including chocolate soft serve ice cream, and slices of pizza.

Golden Corral’s staff may’ve tried a sneaky method of getting Madison to leave the premises early, however, as Madison noticed that the waitress kept bringing her refills. TikToker said she wasn’t going to fall for as she clearly saw through the restaurant’s ruse: they were trying to get her full so she would eventually tap out.

Madison demonstrated an unwavering resolve to her goal, however and didn’t engorge herself on the numerous beverages. About an hour before dinner, the manager of the restaurant approached her to let her know that he was going to need to put the tables together to prepare for the final meal of the day.

Clearly displaying that she had no intention of going anywhere, Madison helped him move the table she was sitting at. Then she was also approached by her server, who let her know that her shift was ending soon, so Madison handed her her gratuity until dinner was served.

While going up to get her food, however, the manager was waiting to speak to her, and it was at this moment that Madison thought her time at the establishment was toast.

This wasn’t the case at all, though, as he just wanted to inform her that her table had moved once they re-arranged the restaurant for dinner. In the snippet of her interaction with Golden Corral staff while she was in line, it didn’t seem like anyone was really frustrated with the fact that she was there — in fact, someone was heard laughing, maybe because they admired her dedication to getting the most bang out of her buck?

But at no point in the video did anyone ask her to leave — she did of her own accord at 8.30 pm, which amounted to a grand total of 12 hours spent at the restaurant since she entered at 8.30 am.

Commenters who saw the video expressed a variety of different reactions: there were some folks who just couldn’t believe someone would spend so long at a buffet: “I would do this if I didn’t get so bored easily Lmao,” one person wrote.

Then there were others who thought of ways to zhuzh up the experience and make it more worthwhile: by bringing a laptop and charger with you and getting some work done.

“If you take a laptop and charges this could be the thing to do if you liked buffets.”

Broke college students could probably take advantage of this too: $20 (with tip) all day unlimited meal access and a place to work? Sounds good, at least this TikToker thought so: “Honestly, if you are in college and have a day with online classes/lots of homework, this would be a really smart idea.

It also seems like Madison became an unofficial member of the Golden Corral camping club with her video, as another TikTok user said that there were folks who used to do this all the time.

This caused the restaurant to up the cost of their buffet to $22 a person, which purportedly didn’t work out in its favor: “our golden corral upped their price to 22 per person because people kept doing that, then closed because nobody want to pay that price”

Another said that the restaurant had attempted “several times” to suggest she leave with social queues, which she deftly avoided, prompting an immense amount of respect: “It sounds like they tried to soft boot you a couple times but you played the missed social queues card. Def got your $ worth. GG,”