Reloading scene asynchronously causes stutter as the scene seems to restart a few times in a row.

I have a project with a single scene. When my player dies I reload the scene. I've tried reloading the scene asynchronously, as in:

 Application.LoadLevelAsync(Application.loadedLevel);

But both in the editor and iOS what ends up happening is the scene seems to star over 3 times in a row. That is, the scene shows up on screen and a UI animation stars (which is the first thing that happens in my scene), but immediately the scene restarts 2 more times, until the 3rd time, where the scene does stay loaded and the rest of the game proceeds as usual.

The only thing I gathered so far is that when running on iOS, when this stutter / multi reload happens, I get the following in the Xcode console:

 (Filename: /Users/builduser/buildslave/unity/build/artifacts/generated/common/runtime/UnityEngineDebugBindings.gen.cpp Line: 65)
 
 Built-in UI layer disabled. Causes: [Requires OpenGL]

If instead I load the scene synchronously, it takes longer to load but I get the scene restarting only once, as I'd expect. Also, on a side note, debug mode seems enabled even though I'm making a release build :/

Any thoughts?

Just in case, here is what I assume is the relevant code. This is the code that kills the player and restarts the level, attached to a 'trap' object that the player can collide with:

 IEnumerator killPlayer(GameObject player) {
     player.transform.parent.gameObject.GetComponent<PL.Model.Vehicle>().Destroy();
     player.transform.parent.gameObject.GetComponentInChildren<AnnouncementsUI>().announce("GAME OVER");
     yield return new WaitForSeconds(1.5f);
   
     AsyncOperation reload = Application.LoadLevelAsync(Application.loadedLevel);
     reload.allowSceneActivation = false;
     
     // Scene fades to grayscale:
     ColorCorrectionCurves[] curves = player.transform.parent.gameObject.GetComponentsInChildren<ColorCorrectionCurves>();
     int curvesDone = 0;
     while (curvesDone != curves.Length) {          
       foreach (ColorCorrectionCurves curve in curves) {
         curve.saturation = Mathf.Lerp(curve.saturation, 0f, Time.deltaTime);
         if (curve.saturation <= 0.01f) {
           curvesDone++;
         }
       }
       
       yield return null;
     }
     
 //    Application.LoadLevel(Application.loadedLevel);
     reload.allowSceneActivation = true;
   }

And this is the code that triggers the first animation when the level starts:

 public class AnnouncementsUI : MonoBehaviour {
   public Text announcement;
   public Driver driver;
   private Animator animator;
   private int announceState;
   public bool startGame;
   
   void Start() {
     driver.autoThrust = false;
     animator = announcement.GetComponent<Animator>();
     announceState = Animator.StringToHash("CountDown");
   }
   
   void Update() {
     if (startGame) {
       startGame = false;
       StartCoroutine(CountDownToGame(3));
     }
   }
   
   public IEnumerator CountDownToGame(int count) {
     for (int i = count; i > 0; i--) {
       announce(i.ToString());
       yield return new WaitForSeconds(1f);
     }
     
     announce("Go!");
     driver.autoThrust = true;
   }
   
   public void announce(string text) {
     announcement.text = text;
     animator.Play(announceState, -1, 0f);
   }
 }