It is commonly held that no page should take more than 30 seconds to load.

A growing concensus also states that 8 seconds is the target load time for the first page.

The world wide web is an impatient audience.

If your web pages take too long to load, you are likely to alienate and lose the very people you were targeting.

Careless use of images is a major cause of delay:
too high quality, too large, too many.

There are many sites, produced with admirable skill and artistry, that simply take too long to load.
If the web surfer was prepared to wait, he/she would be rewarded by wondrous images and magical effects, but, largely, the surfer wants to move on.

People are prepared to wait for data to load and hidden machinery to operate -e.g. flight availabiliy, on-line booking systems etc.

If, however, you are providing an artistic experience of images and movement to show your establishment/product in the best light, you must provide a "skip the intro" option.
You might be dismayed by how often this option is taken.

Form your own opinion. Look at any site you would expect to be receiving thousands of hits and see how "stripped for action" it is.