Just found this thread via Google. Anyways, we just went on a 3 night Disney cruise. We live 20-25 minutes from the Port and there were good FL resident deals, so we figured that we'd finally bite. We have a 4 year-old and a 6 year-old. We are DVC members, we go to WDW plenty and we love it.
We'll admit it...we were seriously bored on this cruise. The boat itself (the Disney Dream) was really nice. Otherwise, we were bored, the food was pretty lacking (and we aren't hugely picky), and the kids' club was nothing more than glorified babysitting Our 6 year-old is really, really easy to entertain. She was SO excited to go to the kids' club. 45 minutes later, she had us paged. She was bored. We tried 2 more times. Same result. It is pretty hard to bore this child. The "activities" consisted of a blaring TV playing a Disney movie while little kids sat on a flashing floor or a coloring page "craft". The only interesting activities were pretty late at night, well after our kids were in bed.
Castaway Cay was nice and the kids' club there was good. They had planned activities for the kids that did not include a TV. If we could have spent 3 days at Castaway Cay we might want to do another Disney Cruise.
Overall, this cruise was not worth the $1300 that we spent on it...not even close. Our kids were glad to get home this morning. That is saying something. I really wish that we'd taken the $$, bought Universal passes and spent the weekend there instead. I just don't *get* the love for Disney Cruises. DH and I kept saying that we must be missing something.
Had you cruised before going on this Disney cruise? I really enjoy cruising, but my opinion about Disney cruises hasn't changed since my previous posts on this thread from almost 3 years ago - plus one more 4-night cruise on the Dream in 2011. However, I have a 7-night Fantasy cruise booked next month (DIS Podcast cruise) and the 14-night Magic Transatlantic cruise in May to look forward to. I hope I'll grow to love DCL after the longer cruises. Even if I don't - I'll always love going to WDW.