My hate of flash intro animations and useless UI widgets knows no bounds. I have got nothing against flash in principle, but designers misuse it, and increasingly advertisers are using it, leading me to constantly re-jigger my adblock settings. I've been using flashblock to address this. Basically it intercepts any flash object and replaces it with a clickable link. If you need the flash, you can click on it and use it as the designer intended - if you don't, you never have to see it.