You're maybe on the path, but I'd recommend smoothing out the camera movement when going from point to point, and rather than go direct from point to point, you can calculate smooth arcs between almost any point.

This may be difficult in the Google Maps API, we built our own renderer, camera, etc.

I'm VERY surprised that the Google Maps API is priced in such a way that you can actually afford this if it got any amount of scale.

Happy to answer any questions if I can help.