We cruised on points last year and probably won't do it again unless we have excess points. The main reason is because something came up and we thought about moving our cruise by one week, but that would have meant another service charge (I believe it is $100 for
DVC to book your cruise with points). It just feels like you have more freedom when you book with a TA. If you cancel 60 days out you get 100% refund, but with DVC you lose that $100 fee.
Some cruises may be worth booking with points, for example, on December 19, 2004, we have a cruise booked that WAS considered value season. Well that ship is selling out and right now there are not Cat. 10s or below left, and the Cat. 9s and above keep going up in price. Since the points are already set, if you were to go on this cruise it would probably be less expensive to use points since
DCL is now charging a much higher rate for this 4 day cruise than they originally planned.
There may be other cruises like this as well (I am watching this one because we are already booked and my sister SAID she was coming too, but never booked and I am starting to doubt that she will go with the new higher prices).
Anyway, I think a lot has to do with how many points you have and for what you want to use them. We only have 150 points, so we have decided that unless we start skipping some trips to WDW, we might as well not use our points for future cruises.
DJ