Hi Nicholas,
First, go heat some water for the tea you'll be sipping while doing all those exports. Exporting your consolidated regions is the way to go, indeed. The resulting files will take the name of the regions they were exported from. Of course, you need the PT MP3 Option to do this.
For meters, there are a few options in the "audio analyzer" plugin market, but those will only show you the one channel they are inserted on. A neat trick I've seen used is to create a window configuration that just shows the faders in narrow mix view and put it on the top of your monitor. It makes a decent meter bridge, but it eats up lots of screen real estate.
As for plugins, Inspector XL is well regarded, but you might want to try the free version (http://www.rndigital.org/inspector.html) as it might be all you need. As a true meter plugin, Waves Dorrough is fabulous but very expensive for a software meter, IMO.
JC Boulay
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com
