I feel like I played the worst tournament of my life. Finished ~1200th out of about 2400. Made countless mistakes. Ugh.

Good analysis starstealer. I'll just add on to that by saying this. The 1500FPPs are an excellent way to use up your FPPs and earn your way into the big tournies. I have noticed that while a lot of good, highstakes players play this satellite, most of them simply don't try. This leads to a lot of opportunities early on to build a big stack. If you can take it seriously (given that it's a freeroll), you should have an excellent chance at getting at least in the top 3. At this point you just have to play good shorthanded poker and hope the cards fall your way a little bit. I've played in 7 or 8 of these and twice I've won a seat into the $215. Once I played the 3600FPP for the $530 buyin and chopped it when it got to headsup. Remember, a 1500FPP satellite is the same as the $27+2 STT cash satellite that they also offer. Most people treat it as a freeroll but really, it's not.

Also, the other advantage of playing the STTs as opposed to MTTs is time. When you play the 500FPP tourney you will have to play for hours before you can earn a seat. By playing the SNG, it will take you no more than an hour to get the seat, and if you don't make it, you can spend the other couple of hours playing more satellites or making money on the cash tables.

Thanks for the deep responses.
Just one other thing. If you play the MTT's at 2.15pm EPM early in the week there are typically less than 243 entrants (182 today), but you are probably doing other things at that time.