At some age Disney may not seem cool to your children. The biggest problem w/ asking for this recommendation is that we don't know your children. Are they the type to join in w/ the group activities? My DS never got into the
DCL group activities, except for the cruise when he was 8 and played PS2 until the Lab closed every night w/ the other boys. During the daytime of most of our 4 DCL cruises he has lived at the basketball court, w/ some ping pong, some arcade, and some swimming pool mixed in. He has gone on 1 of our 3 RCI cruises, at age 9, on the Radiance, and he loved the available activities on that ship, but again, did not participate in the kids club (Adventure Ocean on RCI) activities. After the fact, when I asked him which he would rather do next, RCI or DCL, he said "either, I like them equal, but could we go on a
royal caribbean ship ship that has the skating rink?". So I have both another
Disney cruise and a Voyager class cruise scheduled.
Yes, there is a premium price, typically, for DCL over RCI, on the truly comparable itineraries, same weeks, comparable ships. I believe that the most fair comparison of ships would be the Radiance class ships, though obviously the Mariner of the Seas gets the comparison because of the same port of embarkation. In the end, we chose Adventure of the Seas instead of Mariner for '08 because that cruise will be just 4 months after an Eastern itinerary on the Magic, and I just didn't feel like doing such a similar set of islands again so soon. When we cruise on RCI, yes, we can book a superior class of stateroom than we can on DCL, but the Christmas week 2007 sailing, comparing the Magic to the Mariner, we are in a cat. 8 on Disney for about the same price as a D1 balcony stateroom (approx. comparable to a Cat. 6). I'm okay w/ that tradeoff one more time. Sometimes though the difference is more like a JS on RCI for a similar price as a cat. 8 on DCL (we like cat. 8's).
DS has not been bored on DCL as a 9 yr old even though he did not go to the clubs much, if at all on some cruises. As a 9 yr old he rated the experiences equal. He liked the shows on Disney, no interest in the vegas reviews on RCI. He liked Pluto's and the ice cream at Scoops--now Goofy's--about the same as the windjammer.
We liked Disney's rotational restaurants better than RCI's dining rooms, but found the windjammer to be a much better casual option than the Beach Blanket/Topsiders buffets (though Parrot Cay is a nicer option than the deck 9 buffets). Palo was nice, so was Chops and Portofino. But honestly, food tastes are so subjective that you will find many who had the opposite opinion.
