At the end of runs Ive pulled out every bowsers castle imaginable, from a low 698, to a high 705, even during an offline no reset run, a low 706, so my gold on bowsers castle is quite strong, and in my PBs I have a wide range or BC splits to look at. One thing I noticed, was it seems like the RNG in this level would be more influential on our runs then previously thought, in both my 23:56, and my 23:40, I did bowsers castle in a split time of 2:16, both with optimal RTA door entries. But in my 23:56, I got a 704 on the IGT, an excellent time to do at the end of a run, whereas in my 23:40, I got a 700, Which I personally find to be a revoltingly bad castle, but I still got a great split. I thought the bowser cutscene RNG could only delay 2 seconds at the most, so this is very confusing for me, I have no idea where all this time is coming from.

Did you check if the red block/hammer bro crossed the bridge?