I recently, like Christie, went from aspen to newspaper. I liked the look of the aspen but quite honestly the constant cleaning up of aspen spills wasn't much fun and unfortunately our snake room is carpeted (blech). I've also found that the tub humidity is much easier to control in the summer heat with newspaper.

If you like aspen but find the heavier cypress better Gin you might try what we use for the BCI's. We mix their substrate about half shredded aspen, half cypress mulch (which I bake as our local cypress mulch tends to be very damp). Makes a nice mix with the softness of the aspen but the heavier cypress holding things more in place (looking kinda nice too). The bigger BCI does mounded it up a bit but much less than pure aspen would do.