Influencer Discards 2,500-Peso SpongeBob Cake at Nickelodeon Riviera Maya, Citing Bad Taste

Riviera Maya, Quintana Roo — Influencer and cosplayer Tania Monserrat Lugo said she threw out a 2,500-peso SpongeBob SquarePants cake she bought for her son’s birthday at Nickelodeon Hotels & Resorts Riviera Maya because it tasted unpleasant.

“I threw out this 2,500-peso cake,” Lugo said at the start of a TikTok video in which she explained her decision and shared her son’s reaction to tasting it.

The content creator said she paid for her stay at the resort herself and that her review was not the result of a commercial partnership.

Little praise, one big complaint

Lugo said she found few negatives during her visit to the family resort, but her main complaint centered on the food. The themed cake she ordered for her son’s birthday drew the sharpest criticism.

She said the flavor was so bad that she chose not to serve it and asked staff to take it away. “It was terrible,” she said, recalling the experience.

Although she said at the start of the video that she threw the cake out, she later clarified that she asked employees to remove it and left it to them to decide whether to keep it or discard it.

She questioned why a small cake would cost 2,500 pesos without, in her view, offering quality that matched the price. She also noted that another SpongeBob-themed cake was being sold for 3,500 pesos.

Her son turned it down too

To illustrate what happened, Lugo included a clip in which her son tries the cake. When she asks whether he liked it, the child says no. She also expresses her own dislike and says they will not eat it.

The cosplayer argued that the fondant used to decorate the cake does not excuse its flavor. As a comparison, she showed another custom cake she had ordered previously for her son and said that despite a similar decorating technique, it tasted better and cost less.

She acknowledged the artistic work behind the decoration but said visual presentation should not be the only thing a business focuses on.

Hotel responds to the complaint

After publishing her first review, Lugo said she received an email from the property. According to her account, the message expressed an intention to improve the areas her criticism raised.

The creator also said that while reviewing comments on older videos she found similar complaints about cakes at the resort. She acknowledged, however, that other people said they had bought the same product and liked it.

Because of that, she said, the criticism reflects individual experiences and does not establish that every cake sold at the property has quality problems.

Lugo insisted her dissatisfaction was not only about the money, but about the cake being part of a special celebration for her son. She called it disappointing to pay a high price for something her family did not end up enjoying.

Nickelodeon Hotels & Resorts Riviera Maya is a family resort that offers themed experiences built around the brand’s characters, including SpongeBob. Lugo reiterated that her review was a personal opinion about a service she paid for with her own money, and said she hopes the property improves the quality of these products.