~ 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
Great fun. I look forward to
some kinky hotel sexmore.Poor Mrs. Harshwhinny.
I just want to give her a big hug, even if she seems the type to jump on a restraining order.
Despite each chapter basically being one big complaint, it never gets tiresome and is in fact quite endearing.
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>looks at rating
>realizes I unintentionally left it at Everyone
Ooooooh hell no that crap is going to be hard to keep there.
Thanks for reading, and glad you're enjoying
Lesson learned: Harshwhinny is best pony, until she turns on you. Then she's a more terrifying antagonist than the average fantasy we have about a G4 Grogar.
I look forward to more.
This is a lovely Harshwhinny voice. Looking forward to more.
My favorite part is that the also liked section thus far is crammed with many of my stories even though none* of them are relevant to this one. Harshwhinny's voice was captured well and I'm looking forward to the possibility of her encountering a hotel where she gets food poisoning during Hearth's Warming Eve or something unpleasant and ironic.
*Okay maybe one of them is now that I took a closer look.
This is something I can relate to: the blinking lights on smoke alarms. There’s a particularly evil one in the hallway of my house, installed a month ago after the previous one reached its end of life. It blinks once every minute or so; heck, I have no idea when, precisely. All I know is that it doesn’t blink, until…
Thank Celestia the smoke alarm’s not in my bedroom as well. Godspeed, Ms. Harshwhinny.
Nice going. I can relate. Write on.
fuck the smoke detector light.
Something tells me this is one of the best reviews she's ever given to a hotel
This sounds like the best hotel she's stayed at so far.
Reading this from a hotel room made it way too relatable. Great work so far, hope to see more.
I know hockey teams in hotels sound bad. Soccer is worse. The mom's constantly screaming because the coach's throat went out long ago, the kids being amped on sugar and the extra siblings joining them because the father is away at work. At least hockey kids are too busy worrying about their gear versus the soccer kids who kick the walls.
-True Story
7959839 I dunno what it is about being a kid but for some reason staying in hotels were the biggest jolt of adrenaline imaginable. Especially when you were with friends instead of family.
I vividly remember playing hide-and-seek with a bunch of friends on a school trip. In retrospect I realize we were assholes, but Christ was it fun.
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I suppose it's a matter of perspective on what people found fun as a kid. Growing up I had to sleep in motels with bullet holes, porn on every channel blaring and then the unmistakable stench of someone having thrown up in the bed. As an adult, the motels were worse when the drug dealers came out and the hookers called at 4 in the morning.
We stayed in some of the nicer hotels too. That's the sad thing.
I like how in the previous chapter she gives a two-star rating all because she found someone to be irritating, yet here she likes the hotel all because it's mediocre.
Also, it took me a moment to realize that she published this issue herself.
Your review is ready over at the PCaRG.
It's been almost a year! Are we going to see any more of this?