My family and I go about every 3/4 years. We've got a fairly normal plan we stick to so not much help on the second front, but we stick with Disney far more as more to entertain the kids there.
We always fly direct into TPA and then drive the distance back towards Orlando, but tend to stay on a villa west of Disney. Universal is much much closer to MCO and if you want to go there then personally I think you'd be better off flying into there. We've never had an issue with thunderstorms stopping play into either airport although have had some minor delays. The going rate seems to be about £1.5k in CW and £1k in WT+ that we've seen in the sales.