>>11932845
But you found your way to bowser's castle without even entering vanilla dome?
I remember not being able to find the first donut plains secret because I wasn't good enough at flying, I only got to it after I found the green switch palace (thanks to a magazine tip)
And then it wasn't until later that I found out about the secret ghost house big boo fight, that one is well hidden (but I found that on my own and was proud of it).
Eventually I became a master of smw and could fly wherever I wanted and get all secrets without needing any color blocks. But the way there wasn't instantaneous to me.
What I can't remember is if I first got to Bowser through Star road or regular path, but at that point I had seen most of the game, I remember getting filtered hard on chocolate island so I might have found my way through Star world, not sure.