Yes, Super uses the Dragon Balls. But only in the same way DBZ used them: Just for the characters to have their wishes granted. Z and Super mostly skip what made the concept of the Dragon Balls so great: The actual gathering of the DB's. The journey, the discovery, the difficulty, the exploration and the meeting of new lands and people.
Z's and Super's usage of the Dragon Balls is lame and lazy in comparison.
I appreciate you and your love for GT but I can't get with this at all haha
I agree that the "Grand Tour" is a riveting concept but even that is executed...not the best way... in GT. The charming scenery that they visit in GT is completely wasted on plots that are either boring, retreads or too silly even for dragon ball. It's my favorite part of GT and I can still admit this.
The desert planet and the giant planet as seen in toriyama's art, and such are completely wasted. They don't even meet any cool new characters that join them on their journey (with the exception of Gil) just lame villain after lame villain. They suggest Legic will return at some point but he never does.
I think at this point the gathering of the dragon balls is just seen as tedium when you have a series with insanely powerful characters who can fly or teleport, so the universal Grand Tour should have worked in theory, but it doesn't, really.
Granted, I'm totally down with a collect the dragon balls type story, but I don't see the absence of that in super or Z to be a drawback.