We got new computers in the school lab, but they still choked when trying to render particles with Mental Ray. We had to settle for the scanline renderer
I had forgot that we used Combustion last year to add our audio, so it was a last minute download, and then groping around how to sync the sound with our final video - credit, title, etc.
I spent one night trying to find my download password (I'm a mentor)
I'm overall happy with our animation - we used a combination of keyframe animation and particles. The render output could have been better, and perhaps shorten our narration script.