I was in your position in 2019. My wife and I bought AP's in late 2018. We went four times in 2019 (work and other plans prevented us from going a fifth time). It's a day's drive for us so we flew twice and drove twice. One of the trips was for the
Dreams Unlimited Travel 20th Anniversary at the Contemporary. One other was a spur of the moment trip to see July 4 fireworks. The July trip was a "sun & fun room" only offer which, I think, was better than the existing AP rate.
We found the cost worth it. That was before the AP price increase though. You asked "will be some great deals to get through packages." That's impossible to say. if you have an AP, it normally doesn't pay to book a "package" to use the term of art. We found some good room only discounts and took full advantage of the discounts on special events (Disney After Hours, Desert parties, and even some of our meals (e.g., Biergarten) had AP discounts)
Except for the Dreams 20th, we were able to find some very good AP discounts on room only rates. We stayed twice at Pop and once at AoA. As I said, four nights in July preferred view at Pop was $670 but that wasn't AP.
A week in March at AoA was a little more than $800. We had booked five nights standard view in the Tower at Coronado Springs for the second week of December 2019 for $259 a night (I was most upset, at the time, to have to cancel that).
We had booked 4 nights in January at Pop on a "Gift of Magic" room only rate but after purchasing AP's we converted that stay to AP rates and saved $45 on the room and taxes. The group rate at the Contemporary was a good bit better than any special or AP rate I could find.
It was worth it for us but I'm glad we didn't renew them. We wanted to do other trips and the additional cost of an AP put it beyond what we could justify in late 2019. That's not to say we won't get an AP in the future.
To make the APs worth while, we decided to make several trips to WDW in 2019 (instead of going somewhere else in the area). We booked events and ate in Disney restaurants to take advantage of the AP rates, and used the AP to get discounts on merchandise whenever possible. At the same time, knowing we could return meant that we didn't have to endure the heat of the day to feel we got our money's worth. We often went to the parks shortly before sundown and stayed until closing.
As much as I hated to cancel the December 2019 trip, by September, I found myself suffering from a mild case of "Disney again?" fatigue (brought on largely by the heat during our trips in July and August).
You should do the math. It happened to work out for us in 2019. That's not to say it will for you in 2020/21.
