I am going to start updating this to help those seeking to use this as reference for their own personal code.
Newest update
Another clarification: A similar situation happened to me testing devices on iOS 6.0.1 and the 6.1 beta 2.
It is not completely fixed in iOS 5.1 as stated by @Slev. One device would completely freeze for roughly 80 seconds while trying to access the persistent store on iCloud but would never actually access the information stored there.
I believe this is due to a corrupted log file in the device's OS. Deleting the app or iCloud data on the device did nothing to fix the freeze/inability to access the iCloud store.
The one fix I found was to reset all settings
(erase all content works too) on the device. settings->general->reset.
Only then could I access the data on iCloud with my app on that device again. I hope this helps anyone else that came here looking for a solution to a very frustrating bug.