You can actually get it off ebay for quite a steal. Unless they've cleaned it up. Get the trial off the adobe website to try it. You get a free 30 days.

Easy to use? Painfully so. Once you understand the timeline (keyframes, tweens) and movieclips you're all set.

Is it easy to animate in general? Hardly. It's gonna take alot of time unless you a) resort to primarily tweens b) just don't make the characters move all that much