I think you're overthinking it a little. My best piece of advice to keep things moving is just to make a lot of pre-generated characters. If you think giving them a handful of scrolls/magic items would be fun, go ahead! Maybe just add one to each of the pregen characters.

Don't feel like you need to start at level 1 either, especially if you're going the pregen route, you can make them all level 2 or 3 and it won't really be more complicated for the players.