Carnival Cruises - the scourge of the seven seas

Edited to add: Since writing this post, Carnival has rebooked us with an upgrade! We are thrilled and are super excited to repeat our great honeymoon experience this August!

This pretty much sums up why I haven't posted this week.

But I've gotten to the point where I have some rage that I need to share, so it's time for a post. 

Hey, remember that whole Carnival Triumph debacle a few months ago? Where it lost power, became completely disgusting and unlivable, and had to get towed into port? 

Well, we were actually on that ship on our honeymoon 5 years ago.

This summer is our 5 year anniversary, and my 30th birthday, so we decided to book another Carnival cruise. People actually laughed at us for spending money to potentially vacation at a shit factory, but as someone who has actually visited a shit factory, I disagreed. In fact, we actually defended Carnival, and we were all like "it's cool! everyone makes mistakes! it's ok Carnival!".

Little known fact: teachers don't make much money. So to fund this vacation, we picked up extra after school tutoring, and we both worked second jobs. It sucked, but it would be totally worth it when we were enjoying our tropical vacation, right?

Well, we found out this week that on my birthday, which is during the week of the cruise, there is a mandatory training for summer school. If we missed it, neither one of us would be earning any income over the summer. Not exactly an option.

But still, that shouldn't be a problem. I mean, Carnival has had nothing but bad press, so surely they would help out two loyal customers who had consistently defended them. All we wanted to do was switch to a cheaper cruise in August, and even though we would lose a little money, it would still be worth it.

Oh, nah, Carnival was all like "nope, sorry poor teachers, you know what would be more fun for us? Just keeping your money and screwing you over. Sorry you spend all those extra hours at work and all saving up, that probably sucked". Actually, first they were like "we'll just keep you on hold for as long as possible, because we know teachers have nothing but time during business hours to deal with these sorts of things".

I wasn't satisfied with the answer "no, we'd like to totally f%$# you over for no apparent reason", so I called back today. This time, I got a vague "maybe you can switch, oh wait, no, probably not, um, no, we forgot our policy was we hate customers, sorry we're not sorry". So I attempted to contact them online, and I got this helpful email!

That works out really well, because as of right now, we can only receive 50% of our payment back, and soon, it will go up to 75%! Probably around the time Carnival actually gets in touch with me! I'm actually thinking I am going to cut and paste this and use it as my response every time my boss or a parent emails me. Having an extra 7-10 to fart around will really cut down on a lot of my work load and reduce my stress! (Just kidding please don't fire me we can't afford vacations as it is.)

Please note the email address  - "iCare@carnival.com". Ha, I guess the joke is on us, Carnival! You really got us. Enjoy our money!