I love "the process was quite friendly" coupled with "two of the connectors broke when I looked at them and one costs hundreds of dollars to replace".
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The ZIF connectors for those fans aren't different or much more fragile than the ones in most other laptops.
The adhesives on certain cables tend to trip people up a bit with causing them to pull more than they should and damage things.
Gently working under and releasing the adhesives on those fan cables with the spudger (or a fingernail) before you even start trying to move/unplug them will work a lot better for not tearing things than grabbing them with tweezers will.
The TouchID cable is fragile. Still shouldn't be any serious risk of breaking if you know to treat it with caution, but that would always be the one to take the most care with and watch the most closely while you're working around it.
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The secondary challenge is pretty much just making sure you have all the cables out of the way when you're putting the board back in, because you've got a dozen or more that you need to watch the positioning of and/or tape out of the way.