Ok, after working with support. In the custom launcher settings: I had to add this:
<parm name=' SkipCosuSetup' value=' True' />
<parm name=' allowStatusBarExpansion' value=' False' />
This prevents the pull down of the notification bar. It pulls down but you quickly goes back up. Effectively it's disabled in a round about way.
Can you edit your response and put the XML in there for me? For some reason it gets stripped until you edit the post. Weird!