No. I'm pretty sure you can get Lion in an Apple store. In another few weeks, they will have it on usb stick for $69. Until then, they might let you pay $29 and put it on your own stick if you bring one. As far as I can tell, Apple is NOT asking Leopard users to pay $60 to get Lion but of course the easiest way to get it is to buy it in the App Store in SL, however depending on your internet connection the download can be rather slow.
Maybe it's Comcast or maybe it's Apple's servers, but it seemed to take even longer than the last time I downloaded an iOS SDK. This is part of the reason I'm sure you can walk in to an Apple store and get it there via some sort of locally cached download. There won't be any physical Lion media available from Apple until next month when they start selling usb sticks for $69. It is very easy to make your own usb stick or DVD after you download but before you install Lion as the 3.7 GB "recovery partition" dmg file gets deleted after Lion installs. Instructions for making your own Lion install media are available over at ars and it does not violate Apple's EULA as long as you paid for it in the app store and only install it on computers you "own or control." Try updating iTunes to 10.4 and see if you can buy it in there. It will be associated with your Apple ID at that point.
I know that installing Lion requires an update to the SL migration assistant and I don't know if that same update has been back ported to Leopard yet. That could be a reason you couldn't update even if you had a usb stick or dvd.
