We also live in Vancouver and the Vancouver to San Diego cruise was our first ever
Disney cruise back in Sept 2015! We are a family of 4 and we just did an inside room since it was our first cruise. I'm not sure that a verandah would really be worth it since you're not near land for most of the cruise. That year the cruise went to Victoria (I think Astoria is a first for Disney in 2018) and we didn't get off the ship since we've been there several times.
The only thing I caution about is doing customs in San Diego. It is the only port where non US citizens go through customs ON the ship. And it's EARLY. They stagger the groups so that it's not too crowded (didn't work in 2015, it was a huge mess), starting at 6am. It was NOT a fun way to end our cruise. After we got off we rented a car and drove up to Anaheim to do
Disneyland for a couple of days before flying back to Vancouver from LAX.