Man, I beg to differ.
Notice the amount of changes made to her for her to work on the big screen?
FYI, this is my favorite incarnation of the ship, followed by the TOS version.
The scale is unchanged from the TOS proportions, which is what was under scrutiny. While it changed in a number of ways stylistically, the proportions and size are true to TOS.
For myself, it's not as much about size, as it is about shape. Let's face it - 99% of the time, you're seeing your favorite starship against a stellar or planetary backdrop, with no frame of reference for size. That's one of the reasons why I found the new Enterprise's increase in size to be a little silly - why does it matter? I suppose it made for a more imposing ship for motorcycle-riding Kirk to look at wistfully, but shuttle-pod-riding Kirk of TMP managed to have his own moments of awe in TMP when being carted over by Scotty, and that scene managed to be suitably impressive/breathtaking.
I don't like the proportions of the new Enterprise. It just looks ungainly. Some things are too big, other things are too small. Some things stick out too much. It looks like a kitbash to me - something cobbled together from disparate designs. And, rather cartoonish, like a Looney Tunes Enterprise.
I haven't heard a really good argument justifying the change in design from the original proportions. Updates to the TOS design I understand - that's what they did with TMP, and they did it very, very well.
But enough about proportions and back to the issue of scale/size.
I find the increase in size to be silly, because there was nothing wrong with the old one. The original Enterprise had a crew compliment of around 400. There's nothing wrong with this number. We can compare it to WWII ships or Greyhound buses or whatever, but none of this really matters. It was a narrative decision made in the developmental stages of Star Trek. Giving the Kelvin a crew compliment of 800 and the Enterprise presumably even more changes NOTHING in the narrative sense, because the story is still going to feature 3-7 people with any sense of focus, while nameless redshirts, blueshirts, yellowshirts, yeomen and cooks drift around in the backdrop. The story told in Star Trek 2009 would not have changed one iota with the original, smaller ships. So why bother to change it, save to be bothersome?
The explanation is my annoyance: there's a sense that everything about the new Trek needed to be 'bigger and badder' than everything that came before it. This ain't your father's Star Trek, after all. We're bigger, we're meaner, we're a galactic ARMADA! Our cadets listen to metal and thrash Corvettes, our Vulcans are deathly killing machines, and our communications officer's sex charm will break the most stoic of species. We have SIX WARP CORES! Our starships can travel from Earth to Vulcan in sixty seconds... etc. Our comic Scottish stereotypes are more zany... etc.
I'm going on a tangent, so I'll draw it back in: the TOS Enterprise, and her motion-picture progeny, the refit, are friggin' gorgeous, and there's not a damn thing wrong with 'er, and if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
