As a former Protestant who has recently converted to Catholicism, I think the one thing that really is different is the notion of Faith in the Catholic Church. I wasn’t ready for what a huge change it would be.
For a Catholic, Faith is the Faith of the whole Church, it means accepting what the Church believes, accepting that faith in Christ is also the faith of Christ. It’s not just about what I can personally understand, it’s something much bigger than that. My faith builds up the faith of the whole Church, and when my own understanding fails or my own faith is shaken, the faith of the whole Church, in heaven and on earth, is there to back me up.
In a Protestant context, you can have faith in Christ while choosing what to believe about almost everything in the world. In theory, we should choose based on that faith, and on reason, but in reality, many people, myself included (and I’m a Philosophy graduate and doctoral student), just don’t have the mental discipline to arrive at the right faith based on our own reason alone. That’s why there are so many disputes.
I think the tipping point for me was the realisation that Protestantism had built up its’ own canon of Tradition in the last 500 years, because our personal reason needs an interpersonal dimension to avoid error, but that the canon of Protestant Tradition just wasn’t as good as the Catholic canon.
Still, it’s a different starting point as to what faith means, and where it comes from. That’s a pretty big difference.
Scripture and purified reason will eventually lead you to the truth, but it’s taking the long way round.
I am very grateful to the Protestant reformers, they thought they could see an error, where the Church had gone astray, so they went back and worked it out for themselves, starting after the 7 Ecumenical Councils. 500 years later, they have come to very similar conclusions to the Catholic Church (5 point Calvinism is almost dead, as is anti-Catholic hatred, there’s a rediscovery of monasticism in many protestant churches, the notion of authority in the Church is being rediscovered, etc.), and have had to work hard to catch up, but their conclusions tend increasingly towards unity with Catholic truth, and provide a whole different set of proofs for our one shared Christian faith.
:knight1: 
I think Jimmy baits sortof, but not in a malicious way, to point out how wrong people are…more to spark debate and discover gaps in communication. I like it. That’s how my husband first began to question his faith and eventually converted. So I see good in it if the intent is in the right place. That’s my opinion. 
IMHO, your first paragraph is spot on 