It's been a long time since I did anything in Maya, but if you mean keyframing, interpolation curves (possibly my most favourite thing in the world), drivers (s

It's been a long time since I did anything in Maya, but if you mean keyframing, interpolation curves (possibly my most favourite thing in the world), drivers (second favourite), armature rigging, shape keys etc. etc. then yeah, Blender does have those features and as far as I can tell, they're pretty well polished. What I like best about the way animation is handled is that you can keyframe (almost) anything. As an example, you can add keys for the strength (or some other value) of the normal map that is a node in a material that is applied to one or more objects and animate that value. I dare say that's feasible in other packages too. Whether you can do it by just hitting "i" on the keyboard while mousing over the value you want to animate, I don't know.