Wow! This is way more complicated than I knew. For what it's worth, we came from the SF Bay Area and arrived three days before our cruise. Up until a week before we were staying in Port Canaveral. Our reasoning was it's a long flight with a time change, let's stay at the hotel a few nights and let the kids have fun and get a bit acclimated. At the last minute we cancelled PC and scooped up a 1 bedroom at Kidani. It was the best vacation decision we have ever made, bar none! Honestly, we all had a better time at Kidani than we did on the cruise.
One thing I would never do again is fly back the same day as debarkation. It was pretty brutal. There's only two direct flights back and they're both at the end of the day. We were delayed hours and ending up getting home 22 hours after we woke up to get off the ship.
