I like the strollers for selfish reasons. My wife and I are avid runners and gym goers. Having the kids (6,4 and 6mos this year, and 7, 5 and 1 next when we go) in the strollers in the past has made our time in the park easier and more pleasant/efficient. In addition to providing them breaks when needed, we are much faster when we pushing them around the parks and can get a lot more done than if we had to make the older two walk. They are pretty active too and will likely want to walk most of the time, but the fact is that we can just move faster from place to place without them. In addition to having somewhere to store our stuff and providing more flexibility for staying later in the park (they can konk out easier), it just works for us.
Frankly, before reading this board it never even dawned on me that this would be viewed as "coddling" older kids. My kids will likely want to walk more often than not (and actually fight us to walk on their own), so I never really thought about it as "giving in" to them. Though I guess I see how it could be viewed that way. I just want the flexibility to have the stroller, especially for late in the day, to move around the park quicker because their little legs are only so fast and we like to walk everywhere (for example, we may walk through Epcot, around WS twice, through the BW and then over to DHS in the same day). We definitely won't force them to ride all the time, but at certain points of the day I think it will just be better for us adults to move quicker and get more done. Particularly since we are a family that opens and (nearly) closes parks-- and the kids love that.