Throne of Thunder scenarios

I've been going through some of these quests where you're going through the single-player scenarios with the sun king and the shado-pan. I got to A Bold Idea but when I hit phase 2 where you have to smoke bomb the sentry totems, the 1 button to actually drop the bombs stays gray. I've logged in/out, restarted the scenario, unloaded all addons, reset the player's config to defaults, etc. etc. etc. and nothing I do gets me past that spot. Just fly around on the thunderhawk in circles until I log out and leave the instance group.

Anyone else done this in recent memory and figured out a way to get around it? The wowhead entry for A Bold Idea has some complaints about bugginess and that restarting the instances eventually fixes it, but I've not been able to unstick it yet. HALP.

Make sure your guide is still with you. You can go back to the airship and wait a few minutes and she comes back.

I don't get to the ground part. It's literally the first stage where you fly around and have to clear a path to the front gate with the smoke bombs from on the back of the bird thingy. I presume the vehicle bar ability is a ground-target AOE but I can't make it activate to even place a ground target.

Here is a video of it working.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlTLOEEvnDU

The button stays grayed out until he is in position, maybe you need that exact position before the stage starts.

Yeah, mine never activates. At all. I'll fiddle with it a bit tonight, maybe. Annoying AF.