Here you go Hat (It's been up for 40 mins, only just saw your post though sorry, I was watching it haha)

http://mlp-fim.com/53

I thought it was pretty good. I preferred Return of Harmony almost purely for Discord but I would rank this as high as Canterlot Wedding, especially since it worked on Cadance's cutie mark. Villain was kind of disappointing in his background but otherwise pretty solid episode.

http://mlp-fim.com/53

Yoshiya didn't quote you

Ah, didn't see that last part, my bad

Heeeeeeeere goes! Watching now xD

God the first 8-10 minutes felt like a complete fan service... even cringe worthy. However, it eventually gets back on track around 11 minutes.

I'll save the rest for tonight before sleep. When I'm in a better mood.

Okay, I'm gonna spew out my initial reactions to the episode. Hopefully my thoughts will be more organized later. 

-The first two songs fit in much better than I expected. They aren't the best songs in the show, but they're not bad. The last (reprise of Pass/Fail song) felt horribly awkward at first, but got better around the part with Applejack singing... actually, the middle part was the only part I really liked. It's my least favorite from the episode. We need an AJ song. 

-Plus points for Cadance and Shining Armor being used again, minus points for a completely dull and nearly nonexistent villain.

-Celestia's presentation, while overdone, was still fun to watch. I wonder if there are any negatives to using dark magic.

-The part with Celestia's/Luna's/Twi's cutie marks in the background was really cheesy, but Twi's "mhmm" made me smile. 

-Pinkie's party canon bothered me just as much as when I saw it in the preview. It felt really forced. Plus now we're going to see a bunch of new spider pony memes. Blah.

-They didn't fix the animation error where Twi's horn isn't glowing during part of the Crystal Fair song. Hehe. 

-Rarity almost stole the show for me with all of her dramatics. As it stands now, I think I like Rarity and AJ more, Pinkie Pie a bit less, and the others about the same. Poor Pinkie Pie. I really felt that she was just written poorly in this episode.  I will say that I did like her spy bit though. The Fluttershy costume gag was fun.

I think this is my least favorite season opener. While it wasn't terrible, it just felt too predictable and dull. I was never really nervous that Twilight would fail. I think this would be solved with more time and actually giving the evil villain whom we are supposed to be afraid of some screen time.

I definitely enjoyed the episode, but as some have mentioned, there were definitely areas that could have been improved on.

No, i would largely agree with this. The only Pinkie Pie gag i liked was the one with the Fluttershy disguise, and i completely agree that Sombra was hideously underserved in terms of screen-time.

As for the scene with Twilight and Celestia and Luna and the cutie marks, they're setting something up. Something big. My take (and my hope) anyway.

Agreed. I'm betting for the film.

I've mentioned this before, but I feel that these two episodes are a perfect illustration: I hated the first and last songs because they were purely "take a break from the plot to do a song and dance". In the first one, Spike almost literally asks what he was just singing about. (Or maybe actually literally, I forget.)

The fair song was much better because things were actually happening during it. I didn't feel like I could have left the room and missed nothing significant.

Also, I agree with all the criticism of the villain.