Raytrace and render settings

[Anonymous]

Ok...I know this one is a bit more subjective however I could use an opinion or two.

For this diner project I'm working on, each scene is rather loaded with stuff...the project itself not only includes the diner, 9 human characters, 14 cars, a Texaco station and Arizona landscape in the background, etc., it's got A LOT of freakin' detail...right down to Heinz ketchup bottles, napkin holders and tableware (not to mention a rather highly detailed Wurlitzer 1015 jukebox, a National cigarette machine and bandstand).  Being a 50's styled diner, it's also got a ton of chrome...chrome trim on the walls & ceilings of the diner, chrome table jukeboxes (modeled after those old Seebring 100's) and of course, all the chrome on the various cars in the parking lot.  I've lost count of the number of lights there are in the scene (6 main lights, 5 booth lights, 10 wall lights, 3 ambiant lights, 4 parking lot lights, 12 exterior building lights, a few spots as car headlights........).  I'll attach a few images to give ya'll an idea of what I've been babbling about over the past week or two.

Obviously it goes without saying that the render time on this project...well...sucks.  The attached images are from a 7 second scene that took 3 1/2 days to render on my humble little PC here at home.  Yes, I know such things require a degree of patience when one doesn't have access to a hefty render farm!  LOL!  That said, I also have a total of around 10,800 odd frames to render...3 minutes at 60 fps...for the main animation (and some extra stuff I'm gonna put in the end credits) and right now it's taking between 5 and 15 minutes per frame...it's like watching paint dry...I can feel my own toe nails growing as the time passes. I'm wondering if there's perhaps a few ways that I can speed things up, at least a tad.

As I'm watching the command line batch render, the singular biggest thing that seems to be really slowing things down is the application of the glow.  With all those neon lights, not to mention the rotating neon lights on the jukebox, it's not really surprising, but I have to wonder if there's maybe a way to tweak this out just a bit better...when it hits that glow/halo portion of the render, the system just hangs for a couple of minutes.  Likewise, when I ran Render Dianostics, it suggested that my Raytracing settings were perhaps a bit high...and yea, my Reflections, Refractions and Shadows are set to 10 across the board. I'm using "Production Quality" under Maya Software (can't even imagine how painful this would be in Mental Ray) so I'm wondering if there's maybe something there I can tweak out as well...without loosing any quality.

Comments/suggestions?

Thanks!