Mac Client: Wotlk. (Ragnaros) Unable to log out normally to character screen.

I've been playing on Molten/Warmane for a few years now, and I've always had the same problem with logging out of the game, to the character screen. I've never been able to figure out what causes it. If I try to log out to the character screen, I get the spinny rainbow wheel of death, and it takes 5+ mins to get to the character screen. So, in order to switch characters in a faster way, I've simply exited the game as a whole by quitting the program, and then I re-open the client to get on the character I need to switch to. Obviously this is inconvenient, but workable normally. However, when there are issues with the login server, and the last thing I should probably do is log completely out of my game client, I don't know of an alternative method, or a specific way to troubleshoot.