In case anyone reads this... I believe I have my answer.  If an online backup is already running, the freeze/thaw doesn't affect it however it doesn't look like the freeze actually works...so you end up with a bad snapshot.

If you try and start an online backup while the instance is frozen it tells you there's already a backup running and will not let you start the online backup.

Excellent point Jeffrey, I've only seen the symbol's changed in MSH-2 during an HL7 training course I took many many moons ago, but you are technically correct.

I do think the popup that comes up in Ensemble in the Message Viewer and the DTL Tester is misleading though, since the ampersand is a subcomponent separator, shouldn't the popup show 3.1.1.1 rather than 3.1.2    ?

I believe I have it figured out.... I changed the value to "&GDT"

it is the way the Ensemble Tester was showing that threw me off : (

When I would run the DTL through the tester and hover over the result field, it would show 3.1.2, but when I actually used the transform in a rule and ran the same message through, it showed up in the destination system in 3.1.1.

I guess this is a life lesson, don't trust the output message in the Test Transform !    I wasted a couple hours trying different combinations and characters.....grrrrrrr