I love super visual stuff. However, I feel that these days, that's all anyone wants to do. The problem with a lot of visual effects is that they can't happen in the spectator's hand and they immediately draw suspicion.
Like I said, while I love a good hyper visual piece of eye candy as much as the next guy, I tend to only do one super visual piece per set. I have found that stuff that gets the strongest reactions from lay people is the stuff that happens in their hands. Implicit stuff. Remember, visual or non-visual, the magic always happens in their mind. And sometimes what they don't see is more powerful than what they do see.
I should also mention that when I do visual stuff, I make sure it's really clean looking or easy to clean up. My effect Exposure, for example. It's a visual appearance of a signed card inside of a card case. The clean up is super simple and happens right in front of their noses.