OK, so fast punniness (past funniness?) aside, those are good questions. I do have a little bit of experience with freezing/thawing of various plants, so I'll offer what little I know of this, along with some things gleaned from observations. Empirical observation suggests that gradual is better than fast. And that gradual rise in the ambient temperature is better than higher delta T situations. (i.e. if your trees are frozen through at 20 degrees F and you want to warm them, it's better to let them warm up in a 30 degree shed for a day, followed by a 38 degree garage for however long you want, than it is to move them straight from 20 degrees to 60 degrees. Maybe better still if they could be in an environment where the ambient temperature goes up a degree F every few hours, but who can control that closely?).
I think it's because of a couple of factors (this part is hypothesis) - the expansion/contraction characteristics of water through a range of temperatures is significant (not just the unusual "reversal" aspect in a small range just below freezing, but the rest of the range of contraction/expansion that isn't "reversed" too). And with limited elasticity, a slow change is less damaging than a fast one. (For a gross analogy, consider bending a stick slowly versus snapping it quickly). Some microbiologist friends have also tried to educate me about cellular structures, and what breaks when during freeze/thaw. The second point is that you want the temperature within the tree tissue itself to be fairly "even", for the same sorts of reasons. Even on a slightly larger scale (the large vascular cellular structures, and multicellular structures), damage occurs when the temperature change happens unevenly throughout the structure. So that's some conjecture about why smaller delta T's (differences in temperature between the tissue and the surrounding environment) matter. Whatever the reasons though, I do know that thaw protocol matters too, not just the freeze protocol, if you want living tissue to survive.
In practical terms, I think it comes down to very gross choices: If your trees freeze, you probably can't control the environment closely enough to really optimize. But you might be able to move them to some sequence of somewhat warmer temps, rather than a jump to a much warmer temp.
As for whether to force them out of dormancy, I don't know if there's any benefit to that. I doubt it, but don't really know. I wouldn't do it though, unless you have a place around your house where you can create an "artificial spring" or something like that (and where you can avoid exposing them to more freezes or even drops to near freezing). My rationale is simply that dormant trees seem to resist temperature change better than green trees. So if you have a greenhouse where you have some degree of control over the "suddenness" of temperature swings, go ahead and force them. But I don't think that applies for Jason's setup. (Does it?)
Mike central NY state, zone 5
<edit> p.s. in that narrow range right near freezing (where expansion/contraction is "backward"), it's not clear that the same "gradual" advice applies. Also, if the trees aren't really frozen through (as is almost surely true in Jason's case), then rapidly getting to a little above 32F might have made the most sense, to limit how deep into the tissue the freezing happens (happened), since freezing of adjacent inner tissue could continue even as outer tissue is thawing. My experience is more with trees that freeze through from longer term exposure to cold temps, than with short term dips below freezing. In practical terms: don't unwrap them too soon (you'll expose them to more rapid changes if you do... there's value in those heat sinks like earth and garages).