Love Cabana Bay! Disney has nothing comparable in the price range.
Disney still has a huge advantage with respect to IP/Nostalgia and appeal to kids <10. I like UOR more than WDW because it is way more affordable and offers freedom and spontaneity. At UOR you don't have to plan every minute of everyone in your party's day, or worse yet pay for an app that tells you what to do all day.
On my last WDW vacation I had spent so much I was determined that my family would get our money's worth... that meant riding as many top tier rides as possible (utilizing fastpass), eating at the hard to get into restaurants, going to special events and planning resort days to enjoy the hotels/pools. I still love Disney, and have many great memories, but waking everyone in my family up to rush to a fast pass via an incredibly poor transportation system is not one of them.
It's so freeing at Universal to be able to change plans, and getting "our money's worth" just means doing what we want in the moment. Some mornings I get up early and if my son is up we go to rope drop and ride a bunch of rides while my wife and daughter sleep in and meet us later, some mornings I sleep in and just take the short walk over to Volcano Bay.
My advice is to prepare, not plan. Make some reservations at restaurants that don't usually take walk-ins so they are available to you, keeping in mind that you can cancel them at any time. Look in the app before you go to get a sense of wait times throughout the day, but understand they may be different when you visit. Be open to trying new things, so you can be more flexible. Think about it like this, if you don't get to do something you want this trip, with the money you are saving you can just come back.