Picture if you will... my husband and I, first time cruisers, hear from our friends about a fantastic cruise they took with Carnival in February and how they can't wait to go back. We decide it would be a top notch idea to go on a cruise for my birthday this year which is also the one year anniversary of the sudden death of my father. We thought it would be a good distraction to try and keep us all light and happy in what could be a very down and depressing time.

We booked reservations on the Carnival Ecstasy for adjoining rooms with King size beds in both rooms. The King size bed would be taking up most of the room be we were of the impression that there would be entertainment during all of the cruise and we would likely be at a show, pool or hot tub most of the time. We also ordered a cake and birthday decorations for my cabin and two cases of water as Carnival does not allow you to bring water on board of the cruise ship. I get it... people have gotten crafty in smuggling on their own alcohol and have kinda ruined it for everyone else to try and actually bring water aboard. Fine. I did notify the cruise line that I was diabetic so I was hoping for some meal options that might help (which was never offered - I guess they only asked in the event of a medical emergency). We also booked a shore excursion for Freeport with a private beach day.

Our first problem started a few days before the cruise. I had processed my online check in and we were packed and ready and excited to go on our first cruise! I received an email from Carnival saying there were problems with my online check in. I logged in and was informed a King bed was not longer available for our room as it was an upper/lower room and one bed was not an option. Now for those of you not hip to the cruise lingo, as we obviously were not, upper/lower means bunk beds. Twin size bunk beds for two married adult couples... Needless to say we were panicking at this point. Our traveling companion is a large guy and a twin bunk bed was in no way going to give him anything close to a comfortable stay. We immediately called and started the process of asking what we could do to fix this as both couples had confirmation of a King size bed in the room. We were told we should have Googled pictures of the room so we could see what we had booked. When we asked why we should have to Google a room that was on their website with pictures of one bed and a King size option we were told a technical error allowed us to book the King bed and there was nothing that could be done because the ship was sold out. Read more