Root VC viewWillDisappear, viewDidDisapper not called

[motionmath]

We're building an iPhone game, and trying to bypass our the root view controller (the MainMenu) and jump directly to our game, but this is causing problems. We don't understand how ViewControllers being pushed on top of each other should interact.


For example, inside MainMenu (the root controller)'s viewDidAppear it calls:

[self.navigationController pushViewController:splashScreenVC animated:YES];

When we set Animated to YES, then MainMenuVC's viewWillDisappear and viewDidDisappear both get called. The problem is that this creates a sliding animation we don't want; we don't want people to see our Menu, but rather jump right into playing.


When we set Animated to NO, our MainMenu (the root) doesn't have viewDidDisappear called (does it still live in the background?) and this slows down our game and creates other problems. Later on, we do similar things inside MainMenu (like pushVC straight to a new game) but MainMenu never gets viewWillDisappear and viewDidDisappear called.

Any help would be much appreciated.