What you can do is to preload it at page creation before you need the editor to be used. I do this in a javascript function and then place it inside a DIV tag that is hidden and then all I need to do is set the DIV to visible when i am ready for it. From a user stand point it is very quick.
Hmm, I instantiating a dummy editor sounds like a hacky solution to me. CKEditor inserts a couple of JS/CSS-inclusion tags when it is instantiated for the first time, and it surely uses a function for that. All you need to know it the name of that function and you could load it manually. That's more what I had in mind.
Also, to the DEV-Team: I think this is not a very uncommon wish, respectively this is something that might come in handy for all kinds of AJAX-based / on-the-fly replacements of CKEditor. A method for this in the API would be awesome!
Re: How can you preload CKEditor
And the DIV tag
See if that helps.
Re: How can you preload CKEditor
Also, to the DEV-Team: I think this is not a very uncommon wish, respectively this is something that might come in handy for all kinds of AJAX-based / on-the-fly replacements of CKEditor. A method for this in the API would be awesome!