Haha, I just re-watched.
One thing I noticed is that I think I am very biased against the WBs because of all my WBH experience. I felt almost no threat from all the WBs at the time, that I hardly even noticed them. For me, the biggest obstacles were those fireballs -which I feel is very luck-based, and which would make sense of why I initially viewed it as mainly just luck. But... yeah... there were way more WBs than I had initially remembered. That would probably add to the HYPE for many people.
If anything, I could at least use this as a platform to say, in all seriousness: PLAY THE ****ING WILD BARREL HACK!!!!
Seriously, if you get good at the WBH (i.e. able to pass 1-1 like 30-50% of the time), you will feel WAY more comfortable on levels 3 and 4 of normal DK.