Chapters

December 31st, 999
July 29-31, 984
September 12, 1007
March 5th, 981
November 7th, 995

December 31st, 999
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Hotels of Equestria

December 31st, 999

~ The Paramount Hotel, Manehattan — December 31st, 999 ~

Put yourself in my place for a moment.

Look to the date I listed for this hotel review. Look to the location. And then, only after closely connecting both the date and location in order to understand my position, consider the prospect of having to catch a train on January 1st at 4:37 AM after having spent the entirety of the previous day on one's hooves dealing with whatever boring bureaucratic escapades Equestria presumes of me.

I am a firm believer that hell is less a place and more a specific set of circumstances.

I am also a firm believer that trying to catch a wink of sleep on New Year's Eve at the Paramount Hotel is the worst circle of hell anypony could ever hope not to venture into.

And since I know it will come up if I do not acknowledge it now... yes, I'm well aware of how much of a bitter old harpy I sound. Indeed, as the Inspector for the Equestria Games—an event conceived as an act of friendship and entertainment with a competitive edge, I'm well aware that I'd be classified as a hypocrite for blaming ponies for simply having fun on a momentous occasion. They don't have to be up at dawn in order to be on-time for a presentation on mold growth in the Madison Mare Garden, after all.

Yes indeed. Mold growth. The down-time in between the Equestria Games is an intriguing affair I don't imagine many ponies consider.

No, instead of blaming the justified celebration around me, I will instead shovel the entirety of my blame onto the Paramount Hotel, with its paper-thin walls and paper-thin window blinds. Directly before my window was a neon-sign for a strip-club, and the feeble blinds did a considerably poor job at preventing the blinking affair from flooding my room in a bright red glow.

So, when you, respected hotel owner, are selecting blinds for the interior of your hotel, and you decide to be a cheap jerk about it, I advise you to please consider me—at 1:30AM in my nightie—trying to craft a make-shift set of blinds out of bedsheets to replace the pathetic affair your bit-obsessed self settled on.

I speak from experience when I say that cutting corners doesn't result in any benefits. In my case, it results in potentially catastrophic events that can completely ruin a nationwide celebration. In your case, dear hotel owner, you have a lot less responsibility and pressure. All you have to do is leave your customers SOMEWHAT satisfied, and yet you completely failed even in that regard. If I were to commit such lazy crimes with the regularity that you seem to, you could kiss Equestria's most celebrated sports tradition goodbye.

Even after creating my makeshift blinds out of blankets—leaving me to shiver myself to sleep—thanks to the walls of paper and your bed-springs from the 920s, I could still tell with utmost precision just which rooms were inhabited by somepony a little less lonely than me on New Year's Eve.

★★ - Published in the Canterlot Herald, Issue 167, on January 12th, 1000

July 29-31, 984
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Hotels of Equestria

July 29-31, 984

~ Canterlot Castle, Canterlot – July 29-31, 984 ~

To be frank, I personally believe that we would benefit greatly from striking the word "vintage" from every single dictionary in the nation.

Do away with it. Cast it to the hounds. Truly, I assert that it is holding us back as a species!

Such a term was bounced about to no end in every description of Canterlot Castle that I had come across as I planned my visit to the great city. Or, rather, I was visiting the city anyways, and I decided I'd treat myself to a very well-reputed place while I was there.

In those days I was not travelling to Canterlot on Equestria Games-related business. I was instead a starry-eyed young mare in the middle of an arduous college program. During the summers I was an intern for the advertising commitee of the Equestria Games, where I lived in the filthy city of filth known as Manehattan. Not very often do I travel merely to see sights—such things can be gleaned off a photograph at 100% less of the cost, but I was quite anxious to get out of the filthy city to see one with a higher reputation. Besides, time after time in every measured response given to my past hotel reviews, it is asserted to me that all of them would be instantly nullified by the staggering majesty of such a prestigious and everlasting fragment of historical revelation.

See all those weighty words? Did you enjoy how explicitly pretentious they sounded?

What's that? You didn't?

Then by all means do not consider Canterlot Castle as a lodging option. It is the hotel-equivalent of an old stallion at a family reunion desperately attempting to prove his flickering relevance while being too stubborn to let go of how much of an archaic and dated old fart he truly is.

Canterlot Castle is "vintage" in the same sense as the bathroom drawer full of mothballs at your grandmother's house is "vintage."

I checked in alone. I was traveling alone, too—something that I did not quite enjoy at the time but would later come to see as tradition.

Anyways, immediately upon checking in I arrived to a fluster of activity as, lo and behold, the great Princess Celestia was presently gracing them with their presence!

Now, since I know it will crop up in some future letter to the editor (not that I have an editor, being a freelance hotel reviewer writing for extra bits), I will address the issue right here and now.

"But Florina!" you may cry, "We can't accept your reviews as fact! Everypony knows you already hate the monarchy!"

Earnestly, I am tempted to simply refuse to even acknowledge the ludicrous claims many of my so-called-'dear-readers' posit: that my verdicts are skewed by personal bias. That's ridiculous. Personal bias is for idiots who can't think enough to prove things factually.

Besides, I don't hate the monarchy. I hate that it under-funds the Equestria Games while simultaneously making ludicrous requests that raise the expenses. I hate the fact that I need to write hotel reviews to fund the personal expenses associated with managing the Equestria Games. You'd think such an important job would have a bit more security.

I digress. Celestia had appeared and it was apparently a big deal. As though it were some oddity that Princess Celestia was walking through her bloody house. I don't recall her uttering a single word to the concierge as she crossed the hallway to get to some far-off point in the overly elaborate building, but nonetheless he saw fit to immediately abandon any efforts to provide me with my room key and instead cater to the needs of a Princess whose tail was practically in the other room and she evidently had no interest in conversing with him.

After growing tired of watching a potted plant bloom, wither, and promptly die whilst waiting for his return, I took to leafing through the brochure of the hotel left on the front desk, reviewing all the boisterous assertions that had drawn me to the building in the first place. Many were indeed quite intriguing—for example, it boasted original paintings dating back to the early 400s in every room. Not reproductions, either, rather the original canvas that some ancient delusional had spattered paint all over and declared it worth a million bits a few years in the marginal future.

I was finally led to my room sometime in the next century, whereupon I was immediately greeted with a glaring rendition of Princess Celestia herself. For a moment I was shocked as I stared into the rather annoyed-looking face of Princess Celestia, hung directly across from a bed which reeked of... oldness. True to the brochure's claims, I could see the original indentations of paint indicating it was indeed authentic, but still I was temporarily confused as to why such an unflattering picture would be hung—directly in front of the bed, no less, and lit by a lamp to add to the image of some ghostly apparition silently informing me of my poor decisions in the art of hotel selection.

It was only until I requested another room—having decided such a terrifying image would prove impossible to sleep beneath—that I fully understood the reason for the pictured Celestia's apparent irritation.

For above the bed was an identical image—equally authentic—although in this particular one Celestia looked even more irritated. I can only imagine her sitting still for some ungodly length of time as some mousy little painter captures her image one hundred and forty-seven times, in exactly the same rendition, the whole while barking at her to remain still, damn it!

I was partly curious to see if some of the paintings further down the hall had flecks of the painter's blood splattered across the canvas.

To fit with the intentionally archaic nature of the castle, the hotel was lacking in anything even resembling an object from the most recent century—no television, no alarm clock, a toilet with an alarmingly questionable flush-to-clog ratio... it was especially bewildering because the debit machine at the restaurant was most certainly real, as were the insanely high prices it commanded.

With the overtly haughty, 'holier-than-thou' atmosphere of the hotel properly established for you dear readers, I now feel justified in moving onto the room itself.

Now, if you are fond of rococo style design and furniture—I understand many are—I recommend you close your eyes upon entering, stumble your way over to your bed and sit upon it, and only then open your eyes to behold the room. I don't wish for any of my readers to have a rococo-induced heart-attack. I myself am relatively indifferent to the style when it's in the context of something like Canterlot Castle, where the entire purpose is intended archaism. It looks somewhat rich old-mareish—giving the impression that one is sleeping in a private assisted living home or something, but nonetheless it isn't exactly unpleasant to the eyes in moderation.

My largest problem with Canterlot Castle, though, is the lack of consistency.

The problem with having an inn that is in operation for literal centuries is that after awhile it simply becomes an odd amalgamation of eras. One rococo vanity in an otherwise gothic bathroom, for example, creates a sort of cognitive dissonance that is difficult to articulate here, so I won't bother. I'm well aware that such problems would likely not be observed by a typical tourist anyways.

Another problem with this sort of furniture design is that, frankly, such furniture isn't always pleasant. The beds, for example, are the old sorts with the noisy springs and the overly-fluffy-mattresses, where one wakes up in the middle of the night in sheer terror, feeling as though they are sinking into quicksand.

As such, given the alarming price for both a room and a meal, the lack of attention towards any sense of consistent design, and the quality of my sleep itself, I don't really recommend Canterlot Castle to anypony who isn't particularly interested in the niche architecture it boasts. If you have no interest in such, sleep somewhere less pretentious.

★★ - Published in the Canterlot Herald, Issue 158, on May 12th, 993

September 12, 1007
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Hotels of Equestria

September 12, 1007

~ The Wayfarer Inn, Fillydelphia – September 12, 1007 ~

How many of you fine ponies are aware of the concept of a stamp card?

I imagine most of you are, but I guess for purposes of providing a proper and comprehensive hotel review, I should explain. A stamp card is a sort of loyalty card given to you by a business, in which every purchase you make moves you a little ways further to some reward. Buy thirty coffees at your favourite coffee shop, get the thirty-first free. Get your chariot serviced in the same shop all year, receive a free keychain.

It's a simple affair, but nonetheless one might be surprised to learn that The Wayfarer Inn, located two blocks away from the Fillydelphia Train Station, offers a stamp card.

I don't believe I need to point out the odd and somewhat depressing concept of a stamp card at a hotel.

It was only when the concierge took one look at my card and handed it back to me, motioning with a hoof at the starry sky of stamps and saying with a smile that my room was on the house, did it fully dawn on me just how hopelessly lost I was from any permanent concept of home.

With my mood upon entering established, I feel prepared to say with earnest that The Wayfarer Inn is a reliable and thoroughly adequate hotel. It is that nice sort of hotel that is so thoroughly average that you hardly even really remember your stay there. Nothing so strikingly unpleasant occurs that may allow you to remember much about the experience, nor does anything particularly exceptional expose itself amongst the stock decor and dime-a-dozen pictures on the wall (seriously, is there just a specific factory devoted to creating these bland abstract paintings that exist only to fill obligatory space on a hotel room wall?)

These are the sort of hotels that seem to follow a mutually agreed upon blueprint—one that, regardless of corporate standing, a hotel will choose to follow to a T regardless. Two beds, two lamps, a desk, and a window boasting a muddy-looking Fillydelphia rooftop several stories below. The bathroom is stocked with those scentless toiletries and those sandpaper towels, the television boasts the weather channel, the program guide, the local news, and thirty-seven channels of static. Down on the fifth floor, there is a small rectangle filled with unpleasantly-lukewarm-water that is masquerading as a pool, as well as a few decade old exercise apparatuses in a room that claims to be a gym.

These sorts of hotels don't deviate from the norm nor do they specifically intend to. Nor do I specifically expect them to. No pony staying here expects a spa, and as long as there isn't an adolescent hockey-team a floor above them (which, in my honest experience, actually happens rather frequently) somepony simply sleeps, wakes, checks out, and continues on with their lives as though the past 8 hours were unworthy of note—because truthfully they aren't.

Of course, there almost always exists a sort of underlying transcendental outlier within the concept of hotel reviewing. Mainly, that there are some certain diminutive little variables that, regardless of the state of the hotel itself, can and will completely alter one's stay.

Perhaps an air conditioner produces a slightly irritating frequency, or perhaps the silhouette of a lamp produces an eerie shadow—I cannot hope to fault the hotel owners for such a minor little problem, and as such I am presented with the odd situation of giving a hotel a favourable review despite the fact that I could not for the life of me get a wink of sleep during my stay. How odd, that I have razed hotels that I have woken up feeling refreshed in.

Such a transcendental outlier presented itself during my stay in The Wayfarer Inn as the smoke alarm above my bed.

A blinking red light, in irregularly timed patterns. Sometimes every three seconds, sometimes every ten... I found myself trying to count each blink and failing each time.

When one is left alone in a hotel room at midnight staring up at a blinking smoke alarm, it is as though they lose any concept of spatial awareness. Their sense of chronic progression also seems to vanish. The hours creep on into infinity, the light blinks, the room contorts in strange ways as the eyes desperately beg one to sleep, the light blinks, one's thoughts begin to venture, the infernal bloody light blinks...

Indeed, my thoughts were venturing as I sat watching the blinking smoke alarm. At first, with irritation at the infernal device—I devised a plan to cover the insipid thing with a pillowcase, but a vivid vision of my charred and burned corpse in a hotel bed quickly convinced me that such a thing was perhaps inadvisable.

And so I was left in that strange timeless void. In the middle of the night, without anypony around and without any events presenting themselves for completion, one cannot continue occupying their mind in order to hide themselves from the truths they keep buried beneath an assumed life.

In the dead of night, staring at a blinking smoke alarm light, all alone in a hotel room for two, I had great difficulty running from my mind's taunting and truthful remarks—my life was no more than a stream of the same bland hotel room in the same bland cities as I slept away the night to prepare for the same bland task come morning.

I suppose I ranted. I apologize for that.

Had it not been for the blinking smoke alarm, my stay at the Wayfarer Inn would have been thoroughly adequate. A thoroughly adequate conceirge greeted me with thoroughly adequate manners, gave me the adequate keycard and pointed me down the adequate lobby to the elevator, which took me up several floors to my adequately decorated room, where I promptly plopped down upon my adequately plush bed.

And sometimes, adequate is all a mare truly needs.

★★★ - Self Published on October 5th, 1007

March 5th, 981
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Hotels of Equestria

March 5th, 981

A quick word, before I deliver my review of The Frozen Pines Inn, as observed in the winter of 981.

All of my previous reviews, dating as far back as 984, have been published for the Canterlot Herald. For almost 200 issues they have hosted my criticisms, and I have patiently worked under the limitations their editors have thrust upon me.

The following is one I have been attempting to get published for at least that whole time, and they have rejected it continuously. I understand why and have no faults with their decision. Ponies reading my reviews are looking for me to humorously tear into the unsuspecting—to deliver cold, sardonic insults in as bland a monotone as I can manage.

What follows is none of the sort.

Regardless, I believe I have built up enough of a follower-base from you dear readers to begin self-publishing my reviews, and not relying on a larger publishing body to cling to like a deep-sea barnacle.

I have communicated these desires to my friends at the Canterlot Herald and they understand entirely. Out of mutual respect for our partnership over these exciting few decades, they have agreed to publish this often rejected review as my send-off. Thank you, Canterlot Herald, for helping me through thick and thin with these reviews, and for giving them a home in your magazine.

~ The Frozen Pines Inn, Whinnesota – March 5th, 981 ~

Have you ever noticed how strangely self-contradictory the nature of 'reviewing' places are?

I noticed it reading over one of my old reviews, in which I make it very very clear that I have become disillusioned with 'outside voices.' I have become convinced, if you will, that my opinion is the only one by which I should ever critique anything, and therefore my experience should be the sole experience required for me to adequately enjoy (or detest) something.

The hypocrisy therein lies; whilst saying this, I am saying it in a format designed specifically to shape your own experiences when you go to the hotels I have reviewed. Indeed, unless you are reading these reviews solely for entertainment, you are facing a clear contradiction: understand all that is right and wrong with these places, and then consider the fact that you should never value any opinion beyond your own.

Interestingly, one 'outside voice' that is near impossible to ignore is that of younger incarnations of oneself.

This brings me to my review of the Frozen Pines Inn, during the winter of 981. It was never my specific intention to stay in this motel. But, as it usually goes with motels, I was stranded and without a choice.

When this occurred, I was no longer an intern peasant, but instead an employee of the Equestrian Committee of Sports and Activities. I was still a mere assistant to somepony getting paid far more than me, but I was simply happy to finally be on route to what would surely one day be the life I'd been seeking since I was a filly.

This route, as it happened, brought me to the province of Whinnesota to deliver a quick presentation highlighting our interest in building Northern Equestria's youth ice-hockey representation at the Equestria Games. It was a casting call and nothing more, and if any job screamed 'delegation!' it was apparently this one. I believe that "sending the ex-intern" was the most logical course of action for a committee of ponies who surely did not wish to lift a hoof themselves.

I say this all with negative written intonation, but at the time I was merely thankful for any semblance of responsibility. It happened to be one of the first out-of-Manehattan assignments I'd been given, so I could not help but be excited.

My goal was to stay with a cousin who happened to live in some small town whose ludicrous name I forget—and no, I am not going to harshly critique her house in another review, so don't go asking—but, as is the luck of a travelling mare, my train just so happened to break down in the middle of absolutely nowhere. And I do not mean a mild malfunction easily repaired in several minutes—there was quite literally black smoke in the passenger cars themselves.

I should note for posterity that the midnight train through Whinnesota is not primarily a passenger one—rather, it is one passenger car and thirty-seven freight cars—and as such I don't quite believe the crew knew how to handle us in what must have been a unique event. Fortunately, the train broke down a mere kilometre from the nearest motel. I cannot begin to imagine what would have happened if it had broken down any earlier, considering the winter of 981 was one of the coldest in the decade.

The Frozen Pines Inn ended up being my refuge. A motel of a dozen rooms, it is surrounded by nothing but fields and the small wagonroad leading into town.

It wasn't until I'd checked in, received my key, and made my way to my room on the second floor of the motel that I realized I'd been here before.

It shifted my entire perspective for the night, admittedly. I could not focus on any task, because once that realization had struck me, I couldn't shake it. I kept trying to reconcile every bit of this motel with whatever fragments of memories I still had. One never knows how much to remember while living their life. It isn't until later on that you realize you should have been paying more attention.

Still, over the sleepless night and into the lazy morning spent waiting for my cousin to arrive to bring me into town, the fragments formed into something more cohesive. I couldn't remember when I'd been there last, but I knew it had been when I was rather young. Even then for a period, I'd travelled a fair bit, you see, but it all passed in that same sort of blur that our nostalgic memories normally do, with our projected expectations of a destination acting as a strange, inverted place impossible to return to in the present.

The more I thought on it, the more it became clear that when I had stayed here last, it had been with my parents, which narrowed it down to some time before my tenth birthday.

I thought it was funny, to be reminiscing like this, when I was still in my youth. Sure, it would be more befitting of the Florina Harshwhinny writing to you ponies now, but then? It felt funny, but it wouldn't simply go away with that realization.

Why was this motel in particular such a strange leyline of emotion? It seems to me like the most mundane places are the best fortress against the poltergeists of the past, and what single place in Equestria is more mundane than a hotel room? Even the passport office or the walk-in clinic has the capacity to pose some manner of surprise.

My room in the Frozen Pines Inn was pleasant, to be sure—oftentimes, these small, independently operated motels are more pleasant than they had to be. There is a stigma around them; they are a cheap place designed for the desperate, and nopony staying in them really gives a damn about them at all. It was such a shame, then, to see so much potential wasted in a rather beautiful room. It was a motel whose primary denizens were tired, grouchy ponies like myself, and yet it looked as though somepony had put legitimate effort into its decor. Beautiful paintings signed by an artist I didn't know (but met myself when I was checking out, arguing with her father behind the checkout desk while he apologetically accepted my keys with a smile). As a whole, the motel seemed a strange sort of chameleon, shifting its decor to accommodate for the relevance of the era, while still keeping a charm of its own that seemed strong enough to stick with me even where so many of my other memories had failed. When it comes to interior design, eclecticism is something many think they understand, but truly do not. The Frozen Pines Inn is a pleasant exception.

They even had a small restaurant in the lobby, and the food there was also delicious. With only a few residents ever present at a time, it seems the motel's cooks had more time to focus on the quality of their dishes.

I know not many who stay at the Frozen Pines Inn will care, but on the strange chance that one of the staff members there are reading this review, please know that I legitimately feel you have a talent for interior design, specifically in the hotel subcategory.

What more can be said about it, other than that it is a pleasant and welcoming little retreat that I would be glad to revisit one day, and perhaps I could enjoy my stay a little better without some ghost of my past stirring up trouble once again, haunting me in the most mundane of places.

★★★★★— Published in the Canterlot Herald, Issue 196, December 1003. The hotel in question, the 'Frozen Pines Inn', was demolished in May of 988.

Author's Note

It's back, bitches!

November 7th, 995
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Hotels of Equestria

November 7th, 995

~ Stormsborough Campgrounds, Vanhoover — November 7-14, 995 ~

First of all, what kind of name is that for a campground? Stormsborough. That's terrifying.

Why, you may be wondering, was I staying in Stormsborough Campground? What kind of accommodations was I being denied by the malevolent Equestrian government in order to have to resort to such a pathetic state of affairs?

I was there on vacation, actually.

Yes, we bureaucrats can have fun. Unfathomable, I know. I assure you it's an excessively rare occurrence.

And no, I wasn't there alone. I was there with several friends.

Yes, I have those, too! My, this review must be full of revelations for you dear readers!

True to its name, my first two days at Stormsborough were a rainy and stormy mess. A lot of ponies don't realize this, but the weather teams like to divert storm clouds to National Parks in order to simply get rid of them, similar to how the purpose of those giant smokestacks in mining towns are just to make the pollution somepony else's problem. So, if you're wondering why every time your vacation is ruined by the weather, I recommend an angry letter to the Cloudsdale Weather Factory.

Finally, on the third day, the weather let up and we were allowed to leave the squabbling shelter of our little camper wagon and venture into the wilderness lining the outskirts of the great city of Vanhoover.

And yes, the water is blue. It is very, very blue. Rest assured, if you're looking for blue water, you'll find the bluest water in all of Equestria.

If you're looking for anything else besides blue water, you'll be a little disappointed. Because the only other subjects of note I can recall are mosquitoes, more rain, and the excessively whiny complaints of my accompaniment.

...Oh, and the Stormsborough Park Ranger.

I remember that bastard well.

For obvious reasons, I won't provide any explicit details. For the sake of this review, I'll simply refer to him by a faux name. Let's call him Ranger Jasper.

Anypony who has ever stayed at a national park probably has encountered a Ranger Jasper. You know the type of pony I'm talking about. Ranger Jasper thinks he's a drug-busting cop in Detrot. Ranger Jasper thinks your tiny campfire is a roaring flame of apocalypse, and the soft tunes that a friend is strumming on an acoustic guitar are the horns of Tirek's minions themselves.

We were basically alone in the park, which was to be expected given the week of rain and the fact that it was November, and nonetheless we received 'noise-complaints' and were barred from talking outside past sundown. We were thusly presented two choices: standing outside in perfect silence by our campfire, or within our camper in order to actually be able to enjoy each other's presence.

I suspect Ranger Jasper was hiding in the trees watching us the entire time, just waiting for one of us to slip up one tiny code of regulation so that he could leap out and scold us for it.

I took a vacation into the wilderness to get away from that sort of disciplinary code, so thank you for assuring me that it encompasses our great wilderness as well, Ranger Jasper.

★★ - Published in the Canterlot Herald, Issue 146