Our first DCL cruise was to Alaska and we were disappointed. Since then, we will never recommend DCL to Alaska. The itinerary is expensive no matter what line you do it on, but Disney is really high. Alaska is about the scenery primarily and Disney has yet to figure out how to make Alaska look better from their ship. Why pay the higher price? We shared our experience with many people within Disney. In fact, we were surprised to learn how many of our suggestions appeared on the Wonder just a few short months later. We don't think we were solely responsible, but based on who Disney had us talk to, we know our feedback made a difference.
What we did after our Alaska experience is call Disney to tell them what happened and what we thought they should do to fix it. Then we told them that we were so disappointed in them that even as avid Disney fans, we were cancelling the future cruise we had already booked, which is exactly what we did. Disney eventually decided to give us an OBC to give them another shot, which we did. We were pleasently surprised.
We learned a few things from the experience.
1) Disney does listen to guests
2) Disney can be a good value, if you have flexibility and are willing to be patient.
3) It's all about expectations
I place a lot of responsibility on my vacation dollar. That Alsaka cruise was expensive for us because of how we booked it. We booked it just a few months before sailing and we booked three cabins for our crew of seven. Boys in one cabin and girls in another and one for my wife and I. We could have saved a lot of money cutting it down to two, but our youngest was 16, so it made sense. We later booked a WDW vacation for our group (plus one granddaughter) and also booked three rooms (POR). Pretty much the same duration of time and during peak season (Christmas). Once again, very expensive. This time, we had the right expectations and we had a very enjoyable experience.
More recently we took a trip to
Disneyland, a place we used to spend a LOT of time at since we lived nearby and had annual passes. We now live in TX, so this trip (nearly 4 years since our last trip) was great, but also expensive. We were a bit surprised at how much it actually cost us, even though I used points and stayed at the Spring Hill Suites across the street. Three day park hopper tickets, meals, etc. It adds up quickly.
The answer really is that Disney is pricing us out, for some things. They are not our "go to" or "default" vacation destination. They are our "experience" vacation. When we want something very specific and know we can only get that with Disney, we will choose them. Land or sea, it will only be Disney for those certain circumstances.
Our next DCL experience will be in April of 2018. We have a discount on that one and one OBB to figure out when we'll take.