Thanks for the positive reactions everyone, it's really encouraging.
emalamisura, the views are set up something like this:
window
-rootView
--gameView or settingsView
So rootView is a subview of the window, and gameView and settingsView are subviews of rootView (but only one at a time). The cocos2d Director is attached to gameView.
When the 'i' button is pressed, it sends a message to RootViewController to toggle views. RootViewController runs a UIView FlipFromRight animation, calls [gameView removeFromSuperview] and adds settingsView as a subview to RootView.
Hope this helps. If it's not clear, I'd be happy to elaborate.