Michael: Thanks, that's good to know. Hopefully they'll add support for direct BBCode embedding, but your method is certainly an easy workaround. Great tip.
Kalen: Well said. I can't image what else Photobucket's strategy could be other than wringing a few bucks out of people who need to pull down their photos. After all, why would anyone pay $400 a year for a mediocre service that Google, Flickr, and Amazon do better and for free, and Apple also does better and with impressive integration and synchronization across devices for a fraction of the cost.
I use Google photos with autoupload for free as my backup, Flickr for sharing albums and images here, and I pay Apple $9.99 a month for 5TB of iCloud photo storage. Normal people could certainly get by with only one of these. But I have no clue why anyone would pay $33/mo. for a lesser, antiquated service with mediocre functionality and minimal support when these other options exist.