Why can't my Time Traveler phase through the stalactites after the Twins' Mansion?

After the Twins' Mansion, the Cave Tour continues to a set of stalactites/stalagmites. With the time traveler, apparently it is supposed to be possible to use her ability to phase forward through them. For example, this YouTube video starts right off by showing exactly this. Looks trivially easy.

However, this doesn't work for me. I'm playing on an Android Galaxy, and when I do the same thing, the phase effects show they are trying to do that, but they fizzle and fail, and the time traveler does not move.

Is this a glitch in this version of the game, or is there something I'm doing wrong, or need to do first to get this to work? I notice that even with no obstacle, my time traveler's ability doesn't seem to move her - but I'm not sure if that's supposed to happen or not with no obstacle. She can't just walk through the stalactites, and I've tried it from a variety of distances.