I have been to neither (going to Aulani for the first time in a couple weeks!), but I was bouncing this idea around for quite a while. We were looking at
Disney Cruise or Aulani and ultimately decided with Aulani mainly because we were able to rent points at a significant discount. We have a family of four, which impacts the price of the cruise, but an Aulani room price is fixed. Here are some of the questions that I needed to answer myself.
1. What value do I put in a room? We were comparing a verandah room vs a 1 bedroom. Renting DVC for the 1 bedroom for 4 beats any verandah cruise way out of the water. It probably will still come out cheaper than a porthole room.
2. How much are flights? We live on the west coast, so flying out to Hawaii vs flying out to Orlando was essentially a wash. San Diego was an option as well, but their cruises are significantly more expensive, which came close to covering flights.
3. Flexibility of schedule? We have two kids, with one in school, we prefer our DD to not miss school, so that severely limited what cruises we were open to taking.
4. Over all price. Hopefully this actually answer your question (I realized my first three points probably didn't address your questions at all). Since you are a DVC member, I would highly recommend you consider renting a car since your parking is free. We have a 6 day intermediate car rental in early Nov for $210. Food wise, we are not particularly drawn to the food at Aulani. We will probably grab some snacks and maybe try to budget in a Luau (a huge expense), but otherwise we plan on going to the Foodland (local Hawaiian supermarket) and Costco. We also love Hawaii and will explore restaurants outside the resort. We also plan on cooking most of our breakfast (macadamia nut pancake mix from Foodland). According to my own calculations, going on a
DCL (so pricing might be different for you), the extra cost between cruising and Aulani was about $100 per person per night. We do not anticipate spending $400 a day on food. Essentially this is what it looked like for me.
(Cruise cost + tips, tax, etc) / (how long the cruise is) = price of the cruise per day.
This price came out to be about $800ish per day for us (because we have 4).
(Aulani DVC rental aka total cost + car rental) / (number of days) = price of alumni per day.
Pretty straight forward. We scored a 1 bedroom with rental for about $435 a day.
Aulani was cheaper by $365 a day for us. Compound that by 4 nights, it is a difference of $1460. I feel like $1460 for 5 days and 4 nights is more than enough for us.
I am sure I just rambled and not sure how much I helped but since I already typed it all... I hope it helps a little!