Okay, I see I was not alone. The process sucked for me but I will share how I've managed success, although sporadic.
When I have installed a new ROM, the only way I can get into recovery mode where the camera button doesn't work is to do these things.
1. Install ROM Manager from the Market.
2. Run the Flash ClockworkMod Recovery option within ROM Manager and select Samsung Fascinate.
3. Here is where it is tricky and hard to predict. From ROM Manager I select Reboot Into Recovery. Mind you, this doesn't take you into the proper recovery mode.
4. Upon my phone's rebooting, before it tries and fails to enter recovery mode, I pull the battery, and use the VOL-DOWN+POWER method to power it into USB Downloader mode.
5. I use the instructions we've all done, ad nauseam, with ODIN, flashing the .pit and .tar files.
6. When ODIN reboots my phone it will either reboot it INTO the correct recovery mode where it works just as you see in the YouTube video tutorial.....OR it will just reboot into Android with the Samsung and Verizon animations.
7. If I notice those animations, I pull the battery, and retry steps 4-6.
8. If I CONTINUE to fail with these steps, I will power off my phone and use the VOL-UP and VOL-DOWN + POWER method to manually enter recovery mode (even thought it will be the wrong recovery mode). Once it is at the recovery screen with all the blue options, I will pull the battery and repeat steps 4-6.
This will eventually work.....and once it has done it successfuly once, I can get into the proper recovery mode from that point forward until I wipe my phone completely or backup or restore a ROM.
I'm sorry for the lack of certainty in these steps, but I've done this a lot of times now, and I've reset and restored from backups several times to where these steps have needed to be done again.