So it looks like doing the Herman skip in the Special Edition causes Herman not to show up at the village once you get the banana picker. That means you'll have to go to a beach and wait for him to show up, which loses a lot of time.

However, there might be a way to use this skip to save about 3 seconds. Do the Herman skip as usual but then, at the pond, pick up the jungle before picking up the rope. Herman will show up, but he won't have to walk nearly as much as he does at the river fork. This also makes it a lot easier to pick up the rope at the pond, since you no longer need to worry about Herman showing up if you don't do it right.

I've tried it a few times and Herman shows up at the village, although I'm still not sure this is 100% reliable; maybe I'm just being lucky here.

This is only worth it with the classic graphics, though. With the new graphics, Guybrush takes forever reading what's written on the compass.