Yep, the armrests flip up out of the way (spring loaded). Mine are adjustable, both in length of the bars and width of the rests. Without the aerobars the front end is lighter and slightly more responsive....but I didn't notice any problems after having them on for a short time and never gave it a thought until after I took them off for a little bit. It's really a non-issue to me.

It does take time to get used to riding them, but not all that much, guess since your weight is distributed on the bike differently it makes sense that it wouldn't feel the same. I practiced on some nice looonnnngggg straight smooth roads and it was all good pretty quickly.