I did some searches on this, but it seems most of the answers seem to be related to frequent flyers, and policies seem to differ by airline, so I'm hoping to get some advice here from those who travel a lot.

I'm traveling with my wife and young child JFK -> SFO for the first time to visit our stepson and his wife. This will be our first flight as a family, as we usually travel everywhere via SUV. The wife is a heavy packer, so I'm trying to find out the best/easiest and most efficient way to handle the luggage issue. We're flying JetBlue there, and Virgin back, and we have to buy all new luggage.

We plan to check three bags (one for each of us), then plan to each have a 24x16x10 carrry-on and one of those swiss backpacks each.

I want to keep our annoyance of my fellow passengers to a minimum, and I don't want to worry about overhead space or having to rush to board.

My stepson says when we get our boarding pass at a kiosk, the attendant can tag our carry-ons and we can leave them at the boarding gate and then we'd pick them up with our checked-in luggage at baggage claim? I never heard of that, but all my recent flights I only needed a check-in and a backpack (always tried to avoid the carry-on).

Any advice on traveling "heavy" with a family is welcome.