What's the best way Unity Free users can disguise our level transitions?

I’ve been brainstorming ways that, as Unity Free users, we can hide our terrible transition “seams” from scene to scene, since unfortunately it is impossible for us to preload our next levels, meaning they have to “pop” instantly with a split second of chop before the scene plays out smoothly.

I figured one way would be to quickly fade to black, switch the scene and have the new scene start with a black overlay, wait maybe half a second, and then have that one quickly fade the screen back in, so that during the split second of choppiness, the screen is veiled in black, giving the illusion of a smooth scene load.

Has anyone else figured out more creative ways to “hide” the transition?

Bring up a fake loading screen, something like a black screen with the word “Loading” on it and a spinning wheel animation, that comes up at the end of one scene and at the beginning of the next. The lag that it has when switching scenes just makes it look like it’s actually loading something, which I guess it actually is loading something when you think about it, Hahaha. That’s how I usually do mine.