Ideas so far have included.
Hitbtc
Gdax
Kraken
Liqui
Any experience and knowledge first hand would be great appreciated.
Kraken is easy to signup and trade in. But it has only a few major coins. That is the biggest drawback. I have account there, works fine.
OP isn't referring to creating an account but rather to having his/her coin listed and traded on their platform.
GDAX is coinbase who until recently didn't even accept LTC, so getting a new token on there would be quite difficult to say the least.
I think it'll be difficult to get featured on any to the sites you mentioned. Smaller exchanges have the option but I think that the ones you mentioned have their ow n system in place for deciding when to list trading partners and currencies.