The Wiimote Jacket isn't really as much of a hassle to change batteries. It's stretchy, it's designed so it can be partially bend to give you complete access to the battery cover. I never complained, except for the fact that with rumble plus the speaker, the Wiimote eats through batteries fairly quickly.
With my playthroughs of Galaxy with Mario and Luigi, I had to make at least 4 battery replacements. We're unusually quite low on batteries in this house, which is unusual, we usually have tons of unused AAs lying around in places that have devices that need them.