Well we did end up having to use Kroll Ontrack to get back the VMDKs.. they were intact, luckily. But it wasn't cheap ($12k) since we had to use their emergency service level given the long holiday weekend and the fact the client had already been down a few days.
The VMDKs were as follows for those curious..
C: 60GB
D: 40GB
E: 200GB
Learn from this and ALWAYS check those backups before any hardware change. 