Gox sucks, waited weeks for EUR-payout. Then I cancelled it, bought back BTC and moved the coins to a exchange like bitcoin.de. There the money is founded p2p, and the coins (stored in a wallet at bitcoin.de) are frozen, until the fiat-payment is confirmed by the receiver. Exchanges like BTC-e are very reliable according to the payout of coins. Afaik the BTC limit is at 100BTC and all my withdraws were processed very quick (less than 30min, avg ~10min). I made very bad experiences with cryptsy.com, very laggy and I often got senseless errer-msg like security or internal errors, when I tried to payout.
Just choose the right exchange for your case of application

Altcoins can be quiet good, if you smell a pump and can buy in early.