Restoring from iPhone 5 to iPhone 6 Plus issue

Question

Yesterday, I received my iPhone 6 Plus in the mail via AT&T.  Before I started with the new phone, I checked my current phone, iPhone 5, and it showed a iCloud backup from earlier that day.
I chose to use iTunes to backup my iPhone 5 and selected the 'Use Encrypted Backup' option because I wanted it to remember passwords and other things that an iCloud backup would not to make the transition easier.
After I started the backup, it took about 5 minutes to complete and then about 2 or so hours to copy all of the apps off my iPhone to my computer via USB cable.  I hadn't used iTunes to backup my iphone since my iPhone 3G with older iOS many years ago. Once the iCloud backup option was there, I used that.
So, once it copied all my apps and I was satisfied that the backup was complete, I turned on the iPhone 6 Plus.  Once it got to the spot where it asks if I want to set it up as a new phone or restore from an existing phone, I chose that and told it to restore from an iTunes backup. It prompted me to connect the cable and away it went. It did say that there was an update to 8.0.2, but I chose not to update at the time figuring it may cause issues, so I simply skipped that step planning on updating the iOS after I had my phone restored and ready to go.   It started the restore and the phone restarted twice and then came up to the "Welcome" screen to set it up. iTunes said it was going through a sync, which I expected, to copy over all my photos, ringtones, and apps that were backed up. However, the process seemed to stall on Step 6 of 6 "Waiting for changes to be applied."   I let it sit about 2.5 hours or so and there was no change in the message nor any indication that it was doing anything.  In the iPhone details in iTunes, I could see that it had all my screens set correctly and showed all the apps, but they were grayed out like they weren't there. Indeed, when looking at the phone, it had only the stock apps showing.
I figured something happened with the restore, so I wiped the phone and started over.  This time, I let it update to iOS 8.0.2 since my previous iPhone 5 backup was from iOS 8.0.2.  Though the same thing happened again where it stalled at Step 6 of 6 "Waiting for changes to be applied."  I again let it sit about 1.5 hours with no change at all.
So, for a third time, I wiped the phone and started over. I let it update to 8.0.2 and it did its thing with syncing.. It again seemed to stall at step 6 of 6 "Waiting for changes to be applied."  After 30 minutes with no indication of it doing anything, I clicked on the stop sync option. I saw all my phone screens with my app layout correct in iTunes. So, I hit the Sync button. this time, after getting to Step 6 of 6, it showed it was copying over photos from my computer, my ringtones, and then each app to my phone.  When the sync was completed, I disconnected the phone and everything looked right. I could connect to my iCloud account.. All my email accounts were set up and I didn't have to enter the password. My iMessages were there.  Everything looked good.
The only concern I have is that I never actually got a "Restore Complete" message.  I'm guessing its because I technically stopped the initial sync after the restore.   Or does it not show that and the restore was actually completed when it rebooted my phone twice and brought up the "Welcome" screen where you set a few of the options like wi-fi, location services, etc.   When I go into my iCloud settings in to the backups, there is no message there saying that a restore is in progress.  It did show that before when I looked when the previous attempts stalled at Step 6 of 6. 
Is this something I should be concerned about or since everything looks to be working properly its good to go?

Answer 1

I am having the same issue!  I received my new iPhone 6 plus from atnt yesterday at 10am ... activated it and asked phone to restore from my sprint iPhone5s backup at 10:30 am.  It is now 2:17pm the next day and most of the apps that are incomplete are still incomplete right now.  What can I do to fix this or do I have to just wait?