After PC went from factory direct to dealer sales and basically doubled the price for the same unit I lost all interest in ordering new.
One of my biggest disappointments with Phoenix was changing from factory-direct to 3rd party sales, i.e. dealerships. Like you say, prices went way up, nearly doubled since the hand-off from Kermit Fisher. It also made customizing extremely costly & painful.
I could never afford a new PC today, nor would I want one unless it did not have a slideout (customized). Back in the day, it was so easy to reach out to people one-on-one and encourage them to connect with the factory. I did that often, most especially during the great recession to help bolster PC sales to help them survive through it. It was easy back then because PCs like our special order unit was 25% more than a base model Four Winds 21QB. Now it is nearly 100% more.
I still promote PCs, but I never talk "value", only "construction" and "quality." I hope they have the same construction practices, still plumb and wire PCs today as they did in that 2007/2008 presentation. It would be nice to take another factory tour, though I am not sure how I would be received being that I have no plan to buy a new PC. I would be taking mental notes of changes, basically comparing their current practices from what I remember them to be back in the day.
One change Phoenix made in recent years, I always thought was a discarded opportunity. When redesigning the rear wall unit, Phoenix had an opportunity to redesign the spare tire compartment to make it mulit-purpose. It could have had a rectangular hinged cover to accommodate a spare tire for those who want one, or remove the inner spare tire mounting feature and store zero gravity chairs and of the kind, inside it. They instead changed it to what it is today with no hope for a spare tire for people who want one, nor items like bulky zero gravity chairs. It would have been cool for Phoenix to include a pair of zero gravity chairs with "Phoenix Cruiser" embroidered in the headrests. That would have "caught attention" in RV parks and camp grounds.