While the breakfast accommodations were valuable, the thing to keep in mind is would you have spent $30-40 per person on breakfast every day over a 5-7 day trip, or would you have just booked one buffet breakfast as a treat for the trip, and gone down to the resort gift shop for cereal boxes/milk for the rest of the days so you can efficiently get out to the parks?
Plus, any other food/beverage offerings holds you down to the resort if you want the benefits. With the Magic Kingdom Resorts especially, unless you plan on spending most of your trip in Magic Kingdom where you can walk back easily to your Club Level, it will be a hassle to come back for a free latte if you're in Animal Kingdom, let alone Epcot.
So if your family prefers to stay close to the resort for the majority of the morning/day and go to the parks in the evening, then perhaps it might be worth it. But for us, it wasn't worth it and we never did it again. And that was back when it was relatively affordable, and not $700-900 per night. I couldn't even imagine trying it now.
Yes, there are trade-offs to Club Level for certain. One of them is having to return to the lounge to get the food that is served, and it doesn't work with many people's style of park touring.
We don't usually spend $30 per person per day on breakfast alone, but recently at the Swan, a minimal grab and go breakfast consisting of: bagel, juice, and yogurt = cost nearly $20/per person. (The Swan isn't WDW, but Disney food court prices/QS prices run similar. )
Add just a beer/glass of wine per adult (2), plus a soft drink per child (2) and you've now spent over $100.
It is possible to spend less than that on food at WDW, but it is also possible to spend more than that. (cost/value from Club Level)
To answer your question, I've done WDW just about every which way. Some visits we stick to a very low budget. We've stopped at WDW area grocery stores, packed food in a suitcase, made 2 meals of a pizza from Blaze, eaten many meals offsite. We also have had some splurge visits.
I will also say again, the non-club level rooms are not worth the current asking price. For much of 2023, Pop Century rack is now $280 or more on the weekends (w/the 12.5% tax) for the cheapest room. "Pool view/Preferred location" is a $30-60 upcharge, though that's not factoring the current discount offers.
Weekends at CBR currently run $350 -$400 rack on weekends most of 2023. Pretty crazy!
Contemporary Lake view for Feb 14 rack is $860, Club Level is $1141, so an upcharge of $281. In the spring, with the discount offer, the difference between CL and not CL is March $232. Again, I don't think CL is worth a $200 upcharge.
For that matter, the current WDW food pricing is also absurdly high! 'Ohana is not remotely worth $80 per person (w/ tax and tip).
