Dear Roger:
I assume you did a diff between the two environments EM.properties files to see what might be a culprit.
As a troubleshooting step to learn more information only have you tried temporarily disabling appmap to see if you get further along on the startup? It may give a clue as to why this is happening
Failing that, I would open up a case to see what is going on. If you do that, please let us know teh case number and any resolution (to help others seeing the same thing)
Thanks
Hal German