Hey, I think a few people know about this now.
It worked twice for me, both times by mistake,second time i seen the AUS EXP server pop up or restart with 3/60 so i joined. got "connecting failed" "maximum players reached" etc then i got in and seen countdown, was happy. messaged my steam friend, he got in as well. countdown to 0 "connecting failed" both of us. was disappointing, my friend retried and got in and I didnt. he was playing, I was even further disappointed... tried to connect a few times again, nothing.
then came the magic. I just left it. seriously. left it sitting there after connect failed. ALT tabbed to windows for about 5 minutes reading some facebook banter. came back . "joinging game countdown". playing..
and thats it. done this 2 times now...