Phoenix worms are not by any means slow. At least, not in my experience. They travel pretty far and quickly for their size, LOL. Once they start moving or "wake up" after you take them out of the tub, they never stop moving. It's pretty annoying when you put them in the tank and they all scatter or burrow under the shelf liner before my dragon gets to them. But they are a good staple, if you can afford them regularly.. So expensive.. $10 for 100 of them, which my dragon could eat in 3-4 days (and she was semi-brumating!). So that is at least $10-20 per week.. It was just too expensive for me to use as a staple feeder.
Oh and I'm disgusted and terrified of bugs/worms as well (except for silkworms, which I find cute, lol!), so I don't handle any of my dragon's feeders EVER, with the exception of silkworms. Being Chinese, I naturally think chopsticks are the handiest utensils ever, so I just use my feeder chopsticks, which work for catching ANY feeder. Yes, even crickets! I don't care if it's more time consuming, I still use chopsticks to catch crickets. It's better than touching those smelly things, haha.