Having difficulty bringing down the overall load time, so what I might do now is give it a rest for a little while since it's eating up so much time that I could be spending fixing other things.
In the meantime, I will implement a loading splash screen (instead of the current black screen) so that players know that the game isn't crashing. Rest assured that it isn't crashing upon startup, all you have to do is leave it be and let it load for roughly one minute and it should run perfectly fine.
The good news from all of this is now I can get back to work on more important things. Thank you for your patience and understanding.
Nick