Changing Sparkplugs 2001 DOHC 24 valve

I was prepared to remove the upper intake manifold to replace the sparkplugs when I found a post by a mechanic that says you don't have to remove anything and that he gets a lot of Taurus's in his shop with vacuum leaks because of the manifold gasket.
I set out to follow his advise and I suppose if you do it all the time you can do it by feel as he suggested. As a weekend mechanic I needed to see what I was doing. I removed the following: Wipers, passenger side cowl, ignition pack. I also removed a vacuum line that ran across the back of the motor.
It was a bit of a pain, but not too bad a job. I'm glad it only has to be done once every 100k miles. I just got the car a month ago and it was my first time working under it's hood. The car had been taken to a dealer for all it's maintenance before and it doesn't seem to me that they care too much about the service they provide. According to the receipts it had the 24 or 16 point (whatever) inspection done on every service. They just drew vertical lines through the columns, they couldn't even be bothered to make check marks. It was obvious that the most of the stuff that they marked off hadn't been checked in a long time. The major reason I service my own cars is that the dealers do such a poor job.