forgot to add, to minimiza downtime we perform this dump and import during a slow period. If you're using PKs just note where your dumped tables leave off. When ready to roll to prod just put up your maintenance page, export from production your dbs into csv files again, but now from the PKs upward (this saves considerable time, you could always do the whole db again but wouldn't recommend it), import (add) the missing data and voila - a migrated DB. Switch over your DNS or domain settings (however you handle this) and you're up and running on RDS. Hope this helps anyone.