Gary,
Congratulations on that purchase, I would love to get animating in Maya (Lightwave's CA tools suck, I can't wait for LW8). Did you get "Complete" or "Unlimited"? I know Unlimited runs quite a bit ($7K, I think?), but it's got some fantastic tools. "Paint effects" really turns me on, what a fantastic way to paint realistic detail, and Maya Fluids is unbelievable!

I'm curious, since Maya has basically three ways to model (NURBS, Poly, and Subdivision) what are you finding fits your accustomed modelling workflow best? I'm strictly used to poly and spline with LW (SubD'd as well), and a little NURBS with Rhino, so I'm curious what kind of workflow you're getting used to.

Did it come with Mental Ray? God, MR is cool. I know Renderman has it's own strengths, but the Global Illumination in Mental Ray (with Final Gathering) is just hard to beat for realism.

I do still use Wings for some projects where I need edge support, and it is a strong modeler (especially for free). Alot of LW artists use it to rough out models, later exporting to LW for SubD and tweaking.

Good luck with it Gary, let us see some renders when you get comfortable enough with it!

Brett