I have found that I can accept the hints in my ancestry tree then export the file and merge. This can be tedious in doing just that. Merging people can take a long time and needs to be watched closely. Also adding in the photos, docs, etc takes a long, long time. It seems as of now, there is no great solution. Unless your tree is also backed up to Family Search, which I will not do until they add a privacy feature allowing my tree to be kept private.
Your method, though more initial steps, seems to the most efficient one I have seen.