I don’t know that it’s that painful, if it goes correctly? I did a new iPad yesterday, once it actually worked (problem and solution to Quick Start issue here), it took about 30 mins and I left it running while I did something else, just checking in on it occasionally.
The app that took the longest was DevonThink To Go (I use shallow sync), which took an additional 40 mins once the device was set up. DevonThink can’t be in the background whilst re-syncing data, so I just left it to do its thing.
All my other apps were fine (that I have noticed, so far).
I’ve not had to re-log into any services (NB. I have no banking apps on my iPad), and the only widget that needed me to open the app before it started running was my weather forecast, which didn’t know my location until I re-opened the app.
Apple Wallet transferred the actual card details from the old device to the new device automatically. Here in the UK Apple isn’t authorised to move the bank cards to a new device (for my bank at least), but Apple pulled over the new details and triggered the security alert from my bank so that I could receive a new verification code, so it only actually took a minute to sort.
All in all, the actual transfer when it worked was probably as easy as Apple can make it?
(Of course, because Quick Start has a stupid bug and wouldn’t work until I found the post on here about how to resolve it, I actually spent 1.5hours preceding that trying to get Quick Start to actually work… But you don’t have to suffer that fate because you have been forewarned!)