You should have bought the Best Buy service plan - it covers physical damage and AppleCare does not. My brother dropped his laptop and went to Apple to see if there was anything he could do (he had AppleCare) - it was cheaper to buy a new laptop than to fix the one through Apple. Then my husband's motherboard crashed when he came home from Iraq in August - we had purchased the Best Buy plan and all he had to pay were the taxes on the new laptop.
I love the Apple products (and we have 4 ipods, 3 laptops and an iphone in the house) - but AppleCare is worthless, IMO.
ETA: Oh, and welcome to the dark side!