A lot of people in the community these days already know, but I don't exactly have the best load times. I started out running this game on my Wii U (~2014) with my really old disc (~2010); in October I then bought a Wii (age unknown) and most recently in January I bought a new disc (unused). None of these three setups gave me good load times (evidenced by playing 7-7; the loads are slow enough that the level has always started on the wrong cycle for me).

While it has been suggested to me that the problem may also come from my Wii's disc drive being in bad condition, I'm looking into alternative solutions. As much as I'd hate buying the game yet again, would the Wii U VC version get past the problem and give me sufficient load times (so as to not only be able to run 7-7 ILs but also save a minute or two in any%)?

So my active running is a bit too long ago to give you details about the 7-7 cycles, but i do have some personal experience on the load times for you: I started running on WiiU/Disc and switched to WiiUVC later on. After the switch i did some comparisons and i estimated around 70-80seconds in total timesaves just from the switch. So yeah, it can safe a bunch of time. In theory you should be able to compare your loads to the ones in my PB. That should give you an estimate how much time you can safe on loads (WiiUVC should always have the same loading time since the consoles have the same specs, right?).