I liked the way it overlapped with the last episode, too.
I had real problems, however, with the conclusion. It made no sense. The judge declared that:
"I just finished hearing about how this pony was just treated to the warmest, funnest, most fabulous reception she ever had, courtesy of these fine ponies right here, which in my expert opinion amounts to the first ever unvarnished, unrehearsed, and unbiased appraisal of a potential host of the Equestria games."
Except, she'd just heard Rainbow Dash admit that they'd given their welcome to the wrong pony, meaning that the "warmest, funnest, most fabulous reception" was anything but unrehearsed. They had, in fact, been rehearsing it on the train. There would have been easy ways to fix this -- either don't have Rainbow Dash make that admission or have the judge simply decide that she'll take the other pony's word for how great the planned welcome was. Regardless of the problem with the end, I found it kind of uncomfortable watching the main characters make such a stupid, obvious mistake and then have it drag on for so long throughout the episode. I did really enjoy the pair of jokes where Pinkie Pie screamed "NOOOOOOOOOOO!", and I really liked how the first one set the viewer up for the second one.
