Thanks Rob, it finally worked!!!
So to summarize for anyone who happens to run into the same issue and doesn’t want to put all the pieces from above.
When you are having trouble with replacing a specific record Id with the curly brackets and face similar symptoms (immediate request to reload page followed by the same error message when you insert the merge syntax in the editor), make sure you:
-use triple brackets
-make sure the “I” in Id is upper case (and “d” is lower case)
-do not refresh the page upon prompting
-use the preview button instead
-use the hack that Rob mentioned above (it helped me make sure I was doing some things right)
