Fat Tire Remix Question

Have a question on playing with a Fat Tire Clone recipe. I brewed it once with pretty good success, although i want to play with ingredients. First of all the first batch seemed to be over carbed, can this be cured by just cutting back on priming sugar? I have also substituted the reccommended Wyeast 1056 for Safale US 05 American ale yeast, I read this was a good alternate. Any pointers?

Second I was thinking of adding an oak infusion spiral in my secondary, along with a vanilla bean. I have read all different ways of adding the vanilla bean; whole bean, sliced down the middle, scraping out the insides and chopping it up, soaking in bourbon or vodka. What has proved to be the most effective method.

Most important, does this sounds like a good addition to an already great beer? I love roasty, dark ales and thought this might make for a nice experiment, but i dont want to mess up a good thing.

Thanks

soaking the bean in vodka means you are making a vanilla extract. im going to use vanilla bean in my brown ale... putting it into secondary will prolly just slice it open. and they also have priming sugar calculators that will match the correct amount for whatever beer you are making.