India took us the longest amount of time to complete but in the end had no issues. We read and read and sweated every detail. The only place we just made something up was by wife's mother's place of birth, as we had no idea beyond some city in Western Michigan and just chose one. (I'm not recommended lying, we just had no way of finding out.) Filled everything out, cross checked everything using their check list. Had to redo one form twice. Triple checked the photos were exactly right. Some things weren't clear and/or we saw conflicting information. This included things like the lack of space on the online template to enter every country you'd ever visited, I think about four or five fit. We followed the advise we'd read somewhere and printed out and attached a separate full list. We were coming in on a cruise ship and had no hotel, so we took care to also include a sheet with port authority contact information. We are fortunate to live in Chicago and walked to the visa office (this is not in the consulate, but a separate facility downtown). We were maybe 10th in line at the front desk where someone prechecks everything and all 9 in front of us were rejected. We walked up, the person looked everything over, looked at our extra sheets and said "you don't need these" and tossed them in the trash and then let us into the magic kingdom. As we waited our turn we then saw any number of other people who'd made it past the first hurdle rejected. The person next to us when we were finally called to a window was American born of Pakistani descent and was pretty much told she had little chance of ever getting a visa. In the end our process took five minutes - stamp, stamp, stamp - and we were out of there. The person told us that the courier to the consulate made trips at noon and five and our applications would be in the noon packet. To my amazement the online status changed to "approved" at 2 that afternoon, and then again changed to ready for pickup just after five that afternoon.Walked in the next morning and picked them up. Done.

China was almost as easy except we had to wait forever, and were caught by the need for a photocopy of our passport, a detail not mentioned anywhere other than a sign in the office. A passport agency down the same floor made a killing making passport photocopies for about $5 a pop as no one came prepared. In all the reams of instructions we'd read there was no work about bring your passport and a copy. There was an ancient photocopier in the visa office that had been broken so long that the"out of order" sign was yellowed and curled on the edges. But, again, the visa was available quickly, just a few days.