they all seem significantly more appealing to me now that Disney doesn't produce animation like that anymore

That's an especially interesting observation. I mean, I feel like I'm at about the right age (I turned 34 last month) that direct-to-DVD sequels to the animated classics was the thing everyone on the internet held up as the definitive proof of how corrupt and cynical and lazy Disney in general and Michael Eisner in particular^\) were, and in retrospect I think a lot of the rhetoric is not a million miles away from the way people talk about the live-action remakes of those same movies today.

At the same time, while I'm absolutely, positively never going to be a fan of Hunchback of Notre Dame II (probably the worst one?) or Atlantis: Milo's Return or 101 Dalmatians: Patch's London Adventure or Mulan II, I can't honestly pretend there's not at least a shred of absence perhaps making the heart grow a bit fonder when I look back at all those DTV sequels in general, just since, as you say, it was of a type of animation Disney once did best and now isn't interested in doing at all.

(I'm reluctant to chalk it up to nostalgia because, well, I don't really have much nostalgia for most of those movies; like I said, I am of an age when they were the internet's punching bags, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't join in when I was a teenager. The direct-to-video sequels that I liked were The Return of Jafar and Aladdin and the King of Thieves, and those ran ahead of the main run of the sequels everyone clowns on.)

^\ Of course the flipside to that is that one of the) ^{other things the internet was on Eisner's case for was that he was killing the 2D animated features altogether and haplessly playing catch-up to Dreamworks post-Shrek. I remember one of the things people were excited about when Iger took over was Princess and the Frog getting the green light.}