Colors change when saving to PDF from InDesign

I admittedly don't understand color handling, no matter how much I seem to read about it. Lately my files that I've been exporting to PDF from Indesign have looked slightly different and odd to me once they're converted to PDF. Sometimes the colors are dull, sometimes the drop shadows are a weird grey... Here's the latest example. Perhaps someone has some wisdom for me here...
I created this poster in Illustrator. Here's how it looks in Illustrator:
Then I went into Indesign and linked the file. (this is strange...) When I display the file with "typical display", it displays as such:
That looks pretty good... But when I set the display to "high quality display", I get this:
This is also the result I get when I open the exported file in Adobe Acrobat Pro. Why the color change?
Any ideas?
Thanks!

Thanks, Will...
So, upon investigating, I realized that my color space in Illustrator was RGB... Damn... I must have overlooked that... When I convert (in Illustrator) to CMYK, I get those strange colors again.
When I export to PDF, the Output is "no color conversion", so it's not being converted to CMYK yet...
Plus, I just linked the AI files in Indesign when I placed them in there.
So, Indesign must be converting the file to CMYK? And that's why the colors change once I convert to PDF? What do you think?
Also, I used InDesign to place the files so that I could create a 2-page pdf easily that the printer could work with. I had a 4-up handbills page in there that I was planning on printing as well.
So, if this looks best in RGB, what do you think about me sending an RGB file to the printer and then printing it that way? I've been told that RGB is no good for printing, but I've also read otherwise as well...
Thanks again!!

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