Q: "Cannot restore backup"

I got a replacement phone after the apple store borked a battery replacement on my old phone.  When I try to restore my backup, all I get is a popup message saying "cannot restore backup" right after choosing the backup image to restore.  I checked the iCloud system status and everything is reported as green lights so I'm assuming that the iCloud system status thing is lying since it obviously isn't working.

Is there any way to really check system status or am I doomed to set up my device from scratch yet again even though I have paid for extra iCloud storage AND have backups. 

Is it me or is iCloud just absolutely awful...from photos, to music, and now the backup/restore thing is borked.  I rarely get anything to work the first or second time I try with iCloud.  Simply terrible software and the worst cloud service by far