I have a Series Story Map which has a few entries. Each entry is a map entry, pointing to the same web app. Before the map is functional is fully visualized it looks like each web map for each entry is loaded. I've experimented with different extents for each entry to having the same extent for all entries. Even if the extent is the same, the feature layers for the webmaps, which are identical, are downloaded. The feature layers are not large (about 80k), but download time is 3-5 seconds, and total time to get going is about 10 seconds.
The end result is that the user-experience is not very good, as there is a significant delay.
I've experimented both with the hosted web app, as well as the downloaded template, which has the same results.
Is there anyway I can optimize this somewhere in the downloaded template? I see that everything seems to happen as the result of one atomic call, "arcgisUtils.createMap", and I can't see any options which will help me, but perhaps there is a way around this?