I'm with you there on Crickets. I hate them. They are nasty and disgusting and stinky and they die very easily, just gross..ugh.
But yeah, the thing with Dubais is that they don't really trigger the hunt. They freeze and pretend not to be there. I put Smeagol in a little critter keeper with a few dusted Dubais. Because he would never find them in his busy enclosure.
He knew the routine and would hop on my hand (the food elevator) as soon as I opened the door. The first couple of Dubais would move and get eaten. Then they got smart and froze. I felt bad about it but every so often I would nudge a Dubai to get it to move, so he would hunt and eat it..
Sometimes they crawled all over and on top of Smeagol and he would just sit there, LOL.
But yeah, putting the Dubais in a food dish didn't work for me either. They didn't move around enough.
Smeagold loved Black Soldier Larvae worms, and unlike Super or Meal worms, they are soft. They don't move much either, though, but he would take them off of little tweezers.
I'm not sure about Chewie's but I could swear that one isn't supposed to be feed supers and meal worms due to the hard body? But maybe I remember wrong, but I never fed them.
The gut loaded and dusted Dubais were Smeagols favorite and he grew quickly on them. Eventually he actually started to prefer his Crested Gecko Diet and at the moment he still does. He will take the occasional Dubai, but mostly ignore them. Since he is very big already (going on 50 gr at his relative young age) I let him choose what he wants and don't stress over it. He only has about 14 diff. kinds and flavors of CGD to choose from, LOL !!!
Taking a while to eat at a new place is absolutely normal. Sometimes takes 2 to 3 weeks. So no worries there...
I bet he is nice and full right now, though, LOL