so I apologize if you've already answered this or if it's a really big oversight on my part, but can you explain to me how it was so difficult for them to find Fillory to begin with, and now it seems as if they travel back and forth with almost no issues? I know the fountain is one piece but is that the only way the travel now? (Also I'm not fully caught up with S2 yet) Thanks in advance!
i dont think its ever been asked, ill try my best to answer
so in the beginning, the first visit was penny when he was astrally projecting and saw victoria in the dungeon. then when penny tells them about what jane wrote in book 6 about the button, they go get it. once they get it, penny touches it and gets taken to the neitherlands. when penny come back, he has the pages about the knife. thats when they make plans to go to fillory to get the knife
the next time they go to the neitherlands to go to fillory, they get separated from quentin and the map. they run into josh who leads them to the fillory fountain. quentin and julia go back in time to find a direct portal to fillory, after they commission the blacksmith for the knife, they get pushed to current time and reunite with the others, get the knife, and the whole beast stuff goes down
in season 2 they show things differently. when they use the button, they cut from earth to fillory and vice versa. i brought this up a few weeks back because it made it seem like the button could now instantly go between the two instead of sending them to the neitherlands first, but as someone commented, its likely that it still sends them to the neitherlands and we just skip the fountain jumping parts
of course now trying to keep track of time is fubar. the time change in the neitherlands to earth is constant as far as the last times it get mentioned. but the difference between fillory and earth fluctuates. so it kinda gets to me now that the travelling back and forth seems to be almost instantaneous, because in addition to the time change from walking between fountains in the neitherlands, you have the random time change in earth <–> fillory. we saw recently that quentin spent 3 months in fillory and in that time only a few days on earth had passed. i would do that math for how long a hour on earth would be in fillory time from that but because the time change isnt constant, it wouldnt mean anything
tl;dr yeah it looks like the button lets them travel instantly from earth <–> fillory but if it still makes them go through the neitherlands, there would be inconsistant time changes between trips
