For your Napoleonic complex.

This legendary corner – a very large corner – of Santa Barbara is a haven to those of short stature. For a ridiculously overpriced night at this joint, which boasts a 4pm check-in time making the already silly-expensive daily rate even higher, your inner Napoleon will be seriously catered to.

Meaning that if you are so massively insecure as to demand total sycophancy for your Rolex bewristed persona, this is the place for your short stature because obsequoisness is very much the order of the day. In fact the level of suck-upedness here would put a bilge pump to shame. After about twenty minutes of “Mr. Pindelski this, and Mr. Pindelski that” I found myself longing for those days of yore at the local Best Western. $39 a night, clean sheets and no nonsense. That and wishing my last name was Smith.

In fact, it’s impossible to walk more than 10 yards in this open prison without being accosted and greeted like the profit center you are. I would imagine the inmates at Rikers get more privacy.

And make no mistake, this place really is run by cost accountants. Everywhere you go your name is requested, nay, demanded, by one of the slim young things charged with being your best friend (most are named Carlos or Maria), and it’s not because they want to be your chum. It’s because they are after your billing data. Ice cream at the pool for your son? “Mr. Pindelski this, Mr. Pindelski that”. A glass of water? Yup, you guessed it. And be sure to record the exact choice, or else. Think I’m kidding? They immediately scrutinized/audited/verified that my son did indeed get the Klondike bar, not the Haagen Dazs. And blammo, right on the bill at 3x the market price at the local 711.

Then, when you get over the $40 parking fee and the $20 for the internet connection (for $1000 a night plus tax no way that will be free here) you begin to really miss the Best Western. In its next life this place should be named The Billmore.

My son and I dine at the Bella Vista restaurant in the resort and after they hum and haw over seating us outside – odd given that on this Monday night there’s no one there – we are served a meal of such surpassing blandness that I confess I cannot recall what we ate. OK, my son’s chocolate soufflé was fine while I focused on not throwing up faced with yet more bilge pump action from the waiter/bus boy/etc.

So if you are 5′ tall or less, need your ego polished, have to display your wealth and are generally on the insecure side of the cost accounting ledger, this place is you. Just bring your platinum Amex and suck it in.

The Billmore – the general desertedness testifies to the price.

Value for money: 2/10. Food: 4/10. General yuckyness: 10/10.

iPhone 6 snap.