The Cart Before The Ponies was a bad episode.

[Azureth 687]

Honestly, this is one of my top 3 least favorite episodes in the entire show. Not because it involves the CMC since unlike others I generally don't mind them but I felt this episode was just trash. The whole story and predicament to me requires everyone that's not the CMC to go full idiotic mode. Very out of character even. Hell, the track design itself is all kinds of stupid, who thought it was a great idea to have them intersect like it did?

 

 

Just feel this was a really lazily done and badly done episode all around.

[GrimGrimoire 4,973]

I would agree that it is a bad episode... however it does have a redeeming feature.

That is all.

[Sly 236]

Saying that this episode is bad is like saying that the salt is salty. XD

But yeah, right after the S6 finale this was my least favorite episode in the same season, and the REAL first sign of quality drop of this series. 

[Bricks_Ahoy 860]

Yeah, worst CMC episode to date. We have tracks like these in real life (but their point is for the cars to crash)

[Ashen Pathfinder 16,162]

To be fair tracks similar to that do exist in America. Figure-8 racing is definitely full of chaos, so it's fair to assume that the track in the episode was based off of those.

However, I will agree, the episode was meh at best. Definitely one of the worst of that season.

[Queen Cassie 3,058]

I'm going to have to agree. Like much of season six, this episode was poorly planned, poorly written, and... just plain embarrassing to watch.

[Thrond 3,264]

I remember being somewhat kind to it at first, because I genuinely thought it was going to do a little more than it wound up doing, but yeah, it's not great. I kinda liked seeing the CMC trying to do new things, but the writing on their sisters was really weak and the general conflict is tediously simplistic. One of my least favourite that season. 

[Kyoshi Frost Wolf 41,982]

One of the most disappointing episodes in the entire series. It was boring, I hated the big sisters in it, it constantly hit you over the head with what they wanted to do and it simply wasn't fun. An episode about cart racing and it wasn't fun. That is a fail.

[碇 シンジン 27,437]

I think it was decent 

[Dark Qiviut 22,515]

I gave it a D+, and that grade feels far too lenient. There were way too many problems with it: the track, contrived race-based conflict, the CMCs (including a lazy Scootachicken joke -__-), and especially their "sisters." Outside of Rarity's flashback, they were major assholes who stuck to the predictable just to stay true to their archetypes. (Cheerilee not saying anything in response doesn't help.)

And to echo @Kyoshi, if a racing episode isn't fun, entertaining, and hole-y, you got a major problem.

Overall, Cart's a mess.