Well, I'm glad you were able to get it working.
As far as optimization, on a page like that, perhaps just not preload the images? No individual image is actually all that large (the biggest is 1.2 MB), it is more that you have a lot of them.
Hype doesn't currently have the capability for fine grained control over when to preload what images, though there are some techniques/hacks I've seen on the forums (probably can uncover some old ones searching for "preloader"). The main thing is if you just want a better preloader screen you could use this:
But I'd probably just not preload and see if that's fast enough on a reasonable internet connection.