~ 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