Creating a developer sandbox would be perfect however this requirement does indeed require a new production instance. So if the best advice is to deploy incrementally and often, is there I way I can do this through an order of operations containing the fundamental components first followed by components that reference them?

Thanks for your thoughtful response "Eyescream"... haha.

So can you provide an order of operations? I'm seeing custom fields, objects, page layouts, roles, profiles, and workflows all at once AND THEN deploy Apex, Visualforce and reports?

Oh, this is great. No I don't believe that person accounts were enabled when I attempted. I'll enable them and retry.