A friend is suffering the same issue... Any news on your support case?
Well, not really.
VMWare support suggested it's in the Linux kernel boot process, and suggested to talk to the OS vendor. They did suggest "I could try" to install the native VMWare tools, or disable the OSS version of open-vm-tools – obviously you can't do either on ROS.
My solution has been to just never shutdown, and use "resume". Otherwise startup still takes 3-5 minutes to boot, but eventually finishes. But I tried a bunch of things, since this is kinda of annoying and seeming readily reproducible – changed VM compatibility, disabled side-channel, removed "extra" devices like Camera/SoundCard/etc. Nothing fixes this problem – I just reliably hangs every time. and minutes later starts working.
I've just dealt with it since I just use it to test scripts. But based on your question... I tried the Mikrotik's instructions yet again on a fresh v7.2rc4 CHR today, following exactly the steps in:
https://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:C ... are_Fusion
But still same 3+ MINUTE boot time issue with v7.2rc4 (and 7.1.3) with VMWare Fusion 12.2.1 on Mac. I opened case with Mikrotik just now, SUP-76441.