Eureka! Long story short it's a graphic issue. Not sure about which end it's on, I don't have the worlds greatest VGA.
How I found this out is if you load the instance and wait it takes quite a bit of time. But if you have many instances open (like 10 tracks) and close the GUI and switch between them it's instantaneous. However if the GUI is open and you switch tracks, it takes a long time.
Also, I saved a project with the GUI closed and it reopened much faster than a project without saving before closing the GUI.
So, it's something graphically. Before I submit a ticket it would be nice to have some others try this and see if I'm truly on to something.