I'd like your thoughts on a vacation

A little background - my husband and I had planned a cruise for Feb 2010 with another couple. I had to cancel it when I found out my oldest son would need surgery and I'd have to come up with the 3k out of pocket plus time off for the surgery. So we started talking about a new vacation plan:

We were planning to do an adult only cruise to Alaska next fall. DHs never been and I'm always up to go again, its so beautiful! My friend just got back from the cruise we were supposed to go on. She took her kids since we couldn't go. Seeing how much fun her kids had really made me want to take our kids on one. They are already planning to go again. The price is about the same since we wouldn't have flights and if we take the kids we won't do as many things in the ports. I'm so torn. My friend is going next year either way, with her kids, so that would be fun! We've never taken our kids on a vacation. My daughter got to go to Alabama for a few days when she was but Colton has really been nowhere! Thoughts?

We've taken our kids on a couple of cruises and they loved both of them. I don't know how old your kids are but most cruiselines have really good kids programs. My kids adored the Disney one (they had a giant pirate ship playground in the middle of the kids activity area and lots of crafts and science experiments, movie nights, etc). Really, they were happy to spend hours there which gave us adults some free time. Surprisingly, they also really liked the other (non-Disney) cruise too and it also had a great kids program (Carnival). So, they have it structured so kids and adults can have some fun time.

As an aside, I understand that Disney is starting tours from Vancouver to Alaska in Spring 2011.