I had my interview in mid october and basically have similar things to say. Those rooms used for interviews are entirely absurd and unwelcoming and the little motel clock/radio thingie is annoying. Plus, my first interviewer kept getting paged and he'd answer them all, which wasted precious minutes...
EXCEPT that was all the bad stuff, on the + side, it IS laid back and I think my interviews went well, although not the best that i've had so far (the best were probably Yale, Penn, NYU, Rochester). They're really not out to stress you, but out of the 11 schools i've interviewed at, NONE have been the 'stress interview' so many are worried about getting. Don't sweat being out of the loop--I too will be interviewing again soon and actually kind of look forward to travelling more (not paying more, though!). 🙂