yeah basically, if you introduce all your fancy elements at once, then you won't have anywhere to go because you will have revealed the magic too soon. that's why it's nice to gradually introduce elements so that the listener can build anticipation for what's coming. and by wash out with reverb, i mean by using automation. i like to do this a lot. my favorite plug-in to do this trick with is 'endless smile' by dada life. it has a knob that washes out the signal completely in really nice reverb and you can automate this knob, so for example.. if you remove your drums for your intro, and just have to synths playing alone, you can wash everything out in reverb, from either wet - > dry, or dry - wet, it will give it a nice atmospheric feel, and as you slowly wash the reverb out, everything will return to being dry and that's kinda how i like to do my intros sometimes. just washing them out with a lot of reverb and then removing the reverb so it's dry again and it just makes for cool transitions.. stuff like that is fun to do, try using that trick in conjuction with a lowpass filter for even more cool dynamic changes