Originally Posted by
DaileyB
Thanks again for the many good suggestions, which have been helpful to me in deciding my course of action. Right now I wish to avoid non-Chinese or non-American airports because if anything goes wrong in, for instance, Korea, I have no contacts to assist me in resolving the problem. Also, right now my preference is to take the bullet train from Shanghai to Wuhan as a matter of simplicity so that coming and going flights will be the same.
Shanghai to Wuhan (by train) is arguably simple during the outbound portion of your trip in which you are with your kids (e.g. book hotel and train for next day).
But, on the return journey (when you are not with your kids), there is significant potential for things to go wrong. While I don't think this is an impossible to overcome obstacle (e.g. trains are almost always on time, and transportation between SHA and PVG is straight forward enough for you to put a viable plan in place), if you didn't have to deal with it, things would be simpler/easier.
At the risk of beating a dead horse, I encourage you to try to your best to nail down the SFO-WUH nonstop flight as an option (and investigate DL's unaccompanied minor policy on the SFO-CVG leg). If this works, then go with it; the PVG-SHA-WUH (and vv) drill is bound to set you back $600 anyway.