Donald comes off a lot better in comics, where he's not saddled with a comedy voice that renders him almost completely incomprehensible. Duck Tales was, indeed, pretty popular, with four seasons - and it focused almost entirely on the adventures of Uncle Scrooge and Donald's nephews. Who you could actually understand. (It was also largely based on the Carl Barks comics, so a lot of the stories would probably be super familiar to you.)

And yeah. Mickey's a boring goody-two-shoes. The earliest cartoons had him as an anarchic troublemaker but once he became the Disney mascot he got all the fun siphoned out of him and everyone quit giving a shit about him.