Typical Google Play review time for a normal, well-formed submission is measured in hours to a few business days, and most apps are reviewed inside roughly two to five business days. The tail is longer for brand-new developer accounts, first submissions, apps in sensitive categories (finance, health, children, gambling), and submissions that touch restricted permissions or use the Accessibility or SMS/Call Log APIs.
What genuinely slows a review down: changing metadata while a review is in flight, resubmitting repeatedly (each submission goes to the back of the queue and resets the clock), a first-time account that has not completed developer verification, and policy declarations that do not match what the app does. In practice, the fastest path is one clean complete submission rather than several hopeful ones.
Test tracks behave differently from production: internal testing does not require review, closed and open testing do. Use internal testing to validate the build, then promote the exact same artifact to production so the review only has to consider an already-working binary.
Expedited review requests exist but are limited, usually granted for time-sensitive commercial reasons (a launch tied to an event, a fix for a crash that blocks core functionality) and only when the request is specific and verifiable. Repeated requests for the same issue are not productive. Appeal escalations are similarly limited: for a given policy issue you normally get one escalation step, so the first appeal should contain everything - the policy point you believe is misapplied, the evidence (screenshots, video, console logs, or a working demo account), and the corrective action you already took.
While waiting, do not idle: prepare the appeal text, verify the demo credentials reviewers will use, and check that your store listing and privacy policy match the app. If a rejection arrives, treat the rejection email as the specification - reviewers quote the policy clause they applied, and the appeal needs to answer that clause directly.