Personally, I've found every Carefresh product to be extremely dusty and just out of the package, it stinks. It's also VERY expensive.

For the Ball Pythons, I've used paper towels, cypress mulch, aspen, newspaper, indented kraft paper and medical exam table paper(white paper on a roll).

Definitely stay far away from any substrate that is dusty(ReptiBark is one of them as is Bed A Beast when dry) as it can start coating the inside of the snake's lungs and lead to a respiratory infection. There's a young man on here with a female albino Ball and he has been battling an RI with her for 3 months all because he used Carefresh. Snakes can't cough and aren't able to expel that dust like we can, so it just sits in there making their one functioning lung more and more useless.

Cypress is nice and looks natural. You can get it at Home Depot or any garden center for around $2 a bag.

Indented kraft paper can be purchased at www.uline.com. You can also get unprinted newspaper there, among other things.

Newspaper is generally free, and aspen is in BIG ol bags in the small pet section($12 at Petsmart for a 4 cubic foot bag not expanded).

I've only ever used Bed A Beast with my tarantulas and my baby box turtles. It has the tendency to grow white fuzzy mold sometimes and can be a bit dusty. It would get expensive though to change out everytime the snake defecated/urinated.

I use newspaper for all of the Ball Pythons and the Beardie, just because of ease of cleaning and it's easy to obtain.