I'm noticing that its quite good on snare but misses quite a few of the hits on kick drum especially if there are double kick patterns that are really fast.
Is there anything, other than gating the track , that will help Melodyne 'see' more of the independent hits of each of the tracks? For example, does ARA need to 'see' more or less bottom end or top end in the actual wave to be able to make a more informed decision about the pitch extraction?
Thanks in advance.

As mentioned in another thread just little bit ago, I'm finding that Audiosnap does a better job of transient detection, and allows easily fixing any errors. Since you don't need pitch detection for drum replacement, I would still recommend Audiosnap's Copy as MIDI function based on what I've seen so far.