I'm looking to achieve a cymbal swell or flourish to propel into a chorus. Something emulating soft mallets on a larger cymbal is probably what I'm looking for. I have AD1 along with all the other synths bundled with X3. Are there any suggestions other than shelling out $$ for an orchestral library? Thanks in advance for any help!

BFD3 with the appropriate kit. They have it all. 

I'd strongly suggest you joint v.i.control and participate in their $25 or higher donation offer to receive a 
MASSIVE 14GB Lux Nox PERC+ Library (requires full kontakt) which has a lot of  cymbals!!!
 It's a pretty amazing deal
 
V.I. Control thread with downloadable pdf, walk thru video links, audio samples, how to get it and more talk: 
http://www.vi-control.net.../viewtopic.php?t=40736
facebook background:  
https://www.facebook.com/luxnoxsamplelibraries
 
Mini review from a VI member....
Mini Review: 

So I took this library for a test drive last night and I must say I'm really impressed. Perc+ must contain the most deep sampled cymbals ever, and I mean ever. The number of articulations with brushes, sticks, mallets, hands etc. are breath taking, and much more extensive than any other library on the market. It also contains many unothordox articulations which creates sounds I never knew could come from a cymbal. Huge plus for orginality. 
All the percussion in the library sounds really big too. Personally I often have a problem with the ways cymbals in most libraries are recorded. Far too often the devs have tamed and cut out the natural resonance of the cymbals and this creates a thin sounds. In Perc+ you can really hear the lower resonances (the body) and the force that comes with it. Of coarse you can cut these frequensies if you're in need of a more traditional cymbal sound, but as my old music teacher once said; you can only cut, not add frequencies while mixing. 
There's a quite large collection of bowings, scrapes and effects in the "BowscapeElements" patches too. These should be really usefull if you ever were to do a horror scoring session. Reminds me japanese horror movies and the sounddesign in F.E.A.R. The piano patches is also very nice for horror/thriller type cues.  

To summon up, I think this library is one of the most unique percussion library we've ever had. Instead of focusing on big drums and taikos like every other epic percussion library, it has focus on cymbals, gongs, metals etc. It fills in the void of big sounding epic cymbals. You should definitely pick this one up!_________________ 
 
 
 

My choice for cymbal swells is Swell from Echocollective FX.
http://echocollectivefx.com/collections/swell
 
-Markus

I always use Vienna Symphonic, but that is way too expensive for that one sound.  I like that sound very well and use it often.

Record a cymbal swell?  You can make it just like you want it.

mdages
My choice for cymbal swells is Swell from Echocollective FX.
http://echocollectivefx.com/collections/swell
 
-Markus

Vastman
I'd strongly suggest you joint v.i.control and participate in their $25 or higher donation offer to receive a 
MASSIVE 14GB Lux Nox PERC+ Library (requires full kontakt) which has a lot of  cymbals!!!
It's a pretty amazing deal
 
V.I. Control thread with downloadable pdf, walk thru video links, audio samples, how to get it and more talk: 
http://www.vi-control.net.../viewtopic.php?t=40736
facebook background:  
https://www.facebook.com/luxnoxsamplelibraries
 
 

Both of these look like excellent choices!  thanks guys!

Thank you all for your replies. I don't have the full version of Kontakt (or any version, actually), so that may limit my options. I was really impressed with the Echocollective demos. Markus, do you know if I would be able to just access the .wav files and drag them into Sonar? I'm sure I would be missing out on a lot of the functionality by not using them in Kontakt, but if I could get some of those swells as .wav files that would probably do the trick. Thanks again for the help!