Ideas/Tips for Running Ravenloft

[Bigsby's Hand]

Hey there! It's that time of the year when ghosts and ghouls and various other Undead keyword creatures crawl out to do their thing, and I'll be running the original I6 Ravenloft for my AD&D group for Halloween. I've scoured the internet to make this the best I can - I have props, moody music and lighting, tarot cards, a reworked version of Strahd (to make him more mechanically resemble Bram Stoker's vampires - I love 'Dracula'), and more.

Any cool ideas of your own? Any tips from those who have run/played it? I'd love some feedback!

(And for extra information my party is level four, consisting of a barbarian, cavalier, cleric [with +4 plate mail... don't ask], monk, thief [Dwarven], and magic-user - underleveled? Perhaps, but there are six of them, they used a 91 point buy system, and two of them are Unearthed Arcana brick houses, so I think they can hold their own)

I'd especially appreciate...

• Any content you think I should add/remove
  
• I've revised Fortunes of Ravenloft, printing out tarot cards and dividing the high and low decks. I will do the typical five cards - from the high deck, because they're pretty, and make up some reason about why they totally mean what I say they mean, then draw a minor card at random to determine the bonus/penalty they get in that area. However, a lot of the locations in the Fortunes of Ravenloft are really boring or anticlimactic - i.e. fighting Strahd in the tomb of his mother, or finding the Sunsword in the chapel, or the Tome in the throne room (so messy, Strahd), so I'm considering forcing the locations, goals, etc. (currently I'm going with Sunsword>>>Sergei's Tomb, Symbol of Ravenkind>>>Treasury, Tome of Strahd>>>Study/Highest Tower, Strahd>>>his crypt).
  Should I do this? Do you think it detracts from the game?
  
• Following that, what should Strahd's goals be? I find the options either unsatisfactory or strange/hard to convey to the players. Ravenloft is really focused on Strahd and roleplay and mystery, so it's quite important to me. What goals did you use? How did you keep his goal from sounding Doctor Evil-level stupid?
  
• Some of my players are quite winy about the level-draining, and I agree, but what should I replace it with? I removed XP from the game basically, because it encourages too much meta thinking ("Kill them, we'll get XP!" "Don't get NPC's, they'll take our XP!"), but they don't like ability score reductions. Should they suck it up? Should it be temporary?