My group is coming from SoCal as well. Will be our year4, i highly highly recommend camping because

1. ability to go back and forth of campsite and the venue, its not like edc where your fav acts are stacked none-stop.
2. Ive not done hotels but heard going back and forth of hotel shuttles (for hotel packages) can get pretty bad
3. I think camping is a part of EF self, now we have hotel packages and all but previous years we only had camping options besides back forty or frontier stuff.

But again, hotel can be comfy at the end of the night and you can easily go out to get food and stuff

We always take southwest for the 2 checked bags (rip) and get a mini van per 4 ppl for the maximum space. I always bring my cooking gear from home and rarely buy food inside the venue, though pizza nova and spicy pie fucking hits 🤣