MCPE stuck on Generating world screen

I cannot load any of my saved worlds. I can create a new world and play it for as long as I want. When I close it and try to open it again I can maybe access it a second time. All of my saved worlds  get stuck on the “Generating world” page. The green loading progress bar loads all the way at a normal pace to a full bar, but the screen never progresses to the game. It is not a total freeze because the Minecraft facts keep changing every 5 seconds. In one instance my son was able to see the game I was trying to load on the friends page. He was able to run around in the world from his iPad and found my character frozen in time. I had him try attacking me with weapons and even TNT to try and rouse my character from his bug induced stupor to no avail. I play a mix of creative and survival—all of them are old worlds. (Same problem with 1.6.0)