I'm sorry to hear about your experience. While this was clearly handled poorly by the property, it is unfortunately not that uncommon in my experience when travelling with kids. I always contact the hotel in advance and ask if they can guarantee connecting rooms, and generally will choose a property based on said guarantee. That said, it isn't uncommon for me to show up and have them try to give me unconnected rooms (sometimes even on different floors of the hotel). I remember one property where I booked a room class that was higher than the base room, called and spoke do the hotel directly and received said guarantee of connecting rooms on my booking, and then was told when I arrived that I was given separated rooms because only the base rooms could be connected. They did eventually give me the connecting base-level rooms, but tried to charge me for the upgraded room costs anyhow. Overall, I just try to stress in advance that the connecting rooms are very important to me, and call several times in advance of my stay to reiterate the fact. Having the second room booked on the family 50% rate (which I've happily taken advantage of quite a number of times) doesn't seem to register with the properties as an indication that you're traveling with young children, even when there's an age limit of 12 or 13 on that rate (and I'm usually asked the kids' ages before they allow me to book the rate). I can say that in probably 30+ stays since my kids were old enough to need their own rooms, we've only ever ended up completely separated two or three times (though I've had some sort of complication at the front desk at checkin probably 50% of the time).