I have a suspicion that the long loading times have to do with server capacity/load rather than the patch itself.
This sort of issue often pops up when the server is under heavy load. When you switch zones, the megaserver tries to allocate you to a instanced version of that zone. If the server is nearing or at capacity, it won't be able to find an "empty spot" for you to load into, hence it sits at the loading screen until it can.
This issue has popped up now and then since the beta whenever the servers are under heavy load. Since a drastically larger number of people are playing since the patch, it would make sense that this issue would appear again, versus last week, when the servers were relatively unencumbered. It seems to be a common problem every patch when the more casual players return to view the new content, and then when they stop playing nearly as much in a week or two, the issue disappears.