I probably should have known better. After all, buffets, especially inexpensive ones, generally serve a lot of low quality slop using the lowest quality ingredients imaginable which is how they can still make money. With Cici's though I figured that pizza when you get right down to it is not all that expensive, especially when it's done high volume with conveyor ovens. I thought perhaps the low price was on account of economy of scale. Partially that might be true.
The pizza is terrible though. This is like 2.5 yuan tube of toothpaste bad (in the sense that you could never imagine before that standards of quality could sink that low). The cheese even has kind of an artificial taste like it's processed cheese. The pasta was supposed to have alfredo sauce, but it's been discontinued. What they had was basically watered down pizza sauce to pour over your macaroni.
The garlic breadsticks with cheese were quite good and I thought that the dessert pizza which is kind of an apple crisp on a pizza crust was not that bad either.
It's five bucks and with a coupon it comes with the drink included but really you're getting what you pay for. Don't be a cheapskate and fork over a bit more for a decent meal.