Hi Mark,
I went so far as to open a ticket with VMware. My experience was that they were not really hearing me on the issue and they were in a hurry to close the ticket. The engineer did have me change settings from two vCPU's to one. I am not sure why this would be related to the issue experienced, but I did note that it reduced the frequency and duration of system hangs. I am by no means saying they provided a proper solution as I think we can both agree this is a serious and repeatable defect, but for now it is the best I was able to accomplish. My sanity is somewhat restored, but I am still annoyed that this goes on, and annoyed at the support from VMware being a break/fix model where little to no deeper investigation goes on to truly resolve this defects. Clearly products like Fusion are not a major part of their revenue, and this the attention it gets is limited at best.
Good luck with your issue and getting a resolution. If you do get it resolved, I would love to hear what you learn.
Tony