In the same MSDN forum thread that I referred to in my post "Beta2 - Where's Entity Framework?", Danny Simmons says (with my emphasis)

Believe me, if there were some way to release it sooner with the level of quality that is needed and including the first CTP of the designer which we have promised will be part of this release, then we most certainly would.

I must have missed the promise in past posts/discussions and had no idea that we were going to get our hands back on the Visual Modeler this soon. While I'm also disappointed not to have the new Entity Framework bits to play with yet, this is really great news!