Okay I think that I have my final report for you all.
Backing up ~20GB of data over my slow-ass connection was going to take the better part of a day. The phone would grind away for hour upon hours without the progress bar advancing more than the width of a penny until it would finally begin displaying an estimated transfer time, which would increase as time passed.
One bit of advice I found online suggested that it would go faster if you updated the OS on the phone, so I took my 7 Plus all the way up to 15.
When I went to update it via iTunes on (low) Sierra iTunes had to download an update in order to see the phone.
I did a full backup of the phone to iTunes and then turned to the new phone.
After the initial setup screen answers it popped up with a variety of options, one of which I *now* see that Turtle mentioned but had completely missed:
PHONE TO PHONE transfer
It was ridiculously simple to do it this way.
When I woke up this morning I did see that most of the apps were still pending download and then I noticed that I was not yet signed into iCloud on the new phone so I did that - the result was not immediate - a bit of a gummy, lingering "did I manage to do that or not?" hung in the air and I tried again.
Then I went to one of the apps pending download and did a long press which brought up a menu that allowed me to mark it as a 'priority'.
Still not seeing any immediate progress I went to the App Store on the new phone and found an app that had not been downloaded to my phone and clicked the cloud download icon.
In a few moments I saw the familiar radial time-wipe animation on some of the app icons.
Not sure which of my actions is what kicked off the cascade, but all the apps downloaded within the next 90 minutes and I was able to proceed to the carrier's activation sequence from their website.
As of the 11 o'clock hour I am now cooking with a new iPhone.
The remaining step will be the trade-in for the old phone.
Then our long national nightmare will be over. (thanks Gerry)
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