Question Training suggestions in Panama City Beach?

[schuylerclark]

Hey y'all - my diving buddy (wife) and I are in PCB for a week at the end of May and looking to do our AOW and Nitrox training (and probably additional dives to fill the week). We've done about 35 dives to this point, mostly in the Caribbean and FL. We did OW in Belize through PADI (awesome instructor), but aren't locked in to staying with a particular agency. We're also wondering about the value of doing the full Deep specialty at the same time as AOW since we'll certainly be diving to 130' in the future (and already have once actually). I know SSI has a different approach than PADI to this and I'm trying to understand the benefits of each approach. We also will certainly be diving lots of wrecks in the future (4 so far!) since PCB is our closest access to the sea. FWIW, we opted NOT to do AOW recently on a trip to Jamaica because we weren't impressed with the available instructor. We've got almost a week's worth of diving time on this upcoming trip, so I'm thinking we'll do 10-12 dives regardless of how many are officially training dives, even if we just end up on the jetties by ourselves.

We're pretty independent divers and comfortable diving just the two of us, have decent buoyancy and RMV rates for our experience level, and have our own gear (except tanks). While we're primarily looking to satisfy the cert card requirements, we don't want to just jump through the minimum hoops but rather learn what we can along the way. Any suggestions from folks more experienced with instructors in the area would be particularly welcome. Would it be a better use of our time to do the "Advanced" route through SSI than "AOW+Deep" through PADI?