[keleftheriou]

The US holiday season slowdown is only for a handful of days and not sufficient to explain a 19-day review time.

From Apple's announcement[1]:

> On average, 90% of submissions are reviewed in less than 24 hours. However, reviews may take a bit longer to complete from December 22 to 27.

[1]: https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=uijoypq9

[hightrix]

Correct, but anyone with experience attempting to release during this timeframe knows that review times between Thanksgiving and the new year are always slower than normal.

Additionally, brand new apps, not new versions of existing apps, always take longer.

I constantly recommend to both my project team and other teams asking for advice to have a submission in to the App Store 4 weeks before you want to release. Otherwise you risk exactly what happened here.