Amazing Race

Why don’t they make the teams figure out where they’re supposed to go next?

I’d like to see them figure that out, too. I wish the challenges were more mental than physical.

Is that not the function of some of the clues? Not all clues just say ‘go to Building X’, sometimes they give only a photograph of a building or a hint about the building’s place in history and the teams are required to figure out their destination by research or asking locals.

Because production doesn’t want to pay for tickets to Hong Kong when they actually are supposed to go Paris?

I figured a variation on this argument would come up. I find it hard ot believe a corporation as large as CBS/Viacom can’t budget for the possibililty of people making such mistakes.

Oh yeah, the OP could be talking country-to-country, I didn’t think of that. I agree, production costs would be way too prohibitive. Given how many teams fail multiple times at following cryptic clues in a local context, how many do you think will have to fly to more than one country before they get it right? Also, such mistakes would put several teams WAY too far behind, so then you’ve got both teams and production staff possibly days behind the front-runners (and Phil and the rest of the production team). What happens when half of the pack need to be ‘checked in’ at the last pit stop in New Zealand, the middle of the pack is in Japan, another team went to India, but the front of the pack needs to be ‘checked in’ at the current ‘pit stop’ in Canada? You may also end up with teams arriving in places that are dangerous or may find themselves unable to leave for an extended period of time just due to availability of flights. The whole thing would be a nightmare to co-ordinate if you’ve got players suddenly jetting off to wherever. You wouldn’t be able to predict what kind of budget you’d need beforehand, because you’d have no idea how many teams were going to make mistakes or how many times they were going to make them.

Sure, they could just allocate a HUGE budget to cover all possible eventualities, but I find it hard to believe a corporation as large as CBS/Viacom would be that blasé about doing that. Also, you have to consider that the show just may not be worth that much as a ratings-winner to be worth giving them a bigger budget to cover what could be dozens of worthless flights.

To ensure that costly mistakes were few, you would have to make the clues so easy that you may as well just tell them where to go. Have you seen the show? Teams make dumb decisions every single episode. Without clear instructions, people would be jetting off all over the world all the time, eating up the budget and creating production headaches left, right and centre.

The Amazing Race is not a rally race, despite the name.
It’s a reality game show where people compete in different cities/countries every day or so. Certainly the travel is a portion of the competition (and for some legs, means of transportation is an important factor), but it’s not what the show is designed to be.
A show that was a worldwide no-hold-barred get-there-any-way-you-can race might well be exciting, but it’s not this one. Instead you get custom challenges for each leg that everyone (and every sponsor) can be a part of, and a much greater chance for rankings to shift.

You might as well ask why NASCAR doesn’t just run a 5000 mile race, once a year, instead of doing it the way it’s done now.

CBS/Viacom might be able to afford it, but not the production company behind The Amazing Race, which isn’t allowed to use all the resources of CBS that it wants.

The first season was sort of that way. The endgame was boring - second place was several thousand miles away when they were told they lost.

There was some other race show that basically dropped everyone off in Mongolia and said “first one to the Statue of Liberty wins”. It also was boring.

Was that the one where folks were dropped off and didn’t know where they were, not even what continent? I seem to remember a team pawing through a garbage dump looking for a clue to their location. And I think they were in Mongolia.

Yes, it was a 2001 NBC series called Lost.

Wow, I am incredibly pleased with my recall of a show I saw 4 minutes of and had the worst ratings in the history of media. Also, if you were to drop me off in the middle of Azerbaijan and say, “Munch, you’re in the middle of Azerbaijan”, I’d probably think you were joking, as you clearly made that name up - where am I really, New Mexico or something?

Theoretically, a team could think they are supposed to go to a place where they (and production) doesn’t have the necessary credentials or could be potentially dangerous.

Teams might know that they are not supposed to go to Cuba, North Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran, but I wouldn’t rule it out. There has been some very stupid teams in the past. And their are some other hostile countries as well.

I love the Race but wouldn’t mind if it was more like the early 80’s HBO mainstay, Midnight Madness. Maybe they could even cast David Naughton and Michael J. Fox together as a team.

In addition to the issues previously mentioned there’s the fact that the production company has to be prepared for the contestants to be wherever they’ll be.

If you intend for the contestants to next go to the Eiffel Tower in Paris but they instead decide they’re looking for a remote canyon in the Amazon you need to have people in the Amazon waiting for them so that you could film what happens. THe cameras and microphones don’t have infinite battery life and discspace. You have the issues of players potentially getting in trouble with local authorities.

There are probably insurance contracts prohibiting certain behaviors and visiting certain locations. Issues of visas needed and entry fees to be paid.

There’re a lot of reasons to argue against just letting them wander the globe willy nilly and the cost of last minute airfare to unnecessary places probably isn’t in the top 10.

Those 24 hour puzzle solving races actually happen for real. I have known several people that have participated in those type of events in various cities. I personally have never been on a team. Groups from Stanford are the most deft at putting those types of events on.

The show’s success, despite some complaints about bunching and such, is that there is never really huge gaps between teams. The travel does that, but so does the fact that the clues generally aren’t too tricky.

I’ve always wondered what would happen if a team said to themselves “we’ve got a CBS credit card, screw the Race.” Then decided that to get from London to Paris they’d go looking for a connecting flight in Rio.

Most of the filming is done by crews (one camera guy, one sound guy) who stick with each team. If a team went to the wrong continent, their crew would go with them. Not a lot of extra expense involved.

(The Amazing Producers try to downplay it. When we see teams in the airport buying two tickets, they really need four. And I think the camera crews get shuffled among the teams at the Pit Stops, so they don’t build up loyalty to one team and affect the Race.)

There’s already an issue with travel visas. The Producers do all the paperwork and get the needed visas in advance. I’m not sure how much the teams are told about which countries they’ll be going to, but they are carrying their passports, so they could see any stamps or endorsements.

I think we’re all missing the obvious, though. For any long-distance travel, make it obvious (“fly to Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris”), and then have a clue box in the airport with a cryptic hint where to go next.

Yes, plus supplies when they get where they’re going and all the paperwork and palm greasing that happens to make sure entry and exit into various countries goes smoothly (how is it we’ve never seen anybody have to bribe a roadblock when traveling through some African backwater).

You let Team A wander halfway around the world on a wild goose chase and most of that digression is going to go without being captured on tape once the camera and microphone batteries die or they run out of disc space on their cameras.

I have an acquaintance that has worked as a steadycam operator on several reality shows and he mentions that there are always a lot more people around than you ever see on TV.

I too wish the contestants had to do more mental work in figuring out where to go but I can understand why they don’t make it a puzzle to figure out what the next country is.

And there’s also the issue of Phil. He needs to be in Place A to eliminate the last place team and then still have time to get to Place B before the first team finishes the next leg. If the last place team is in Argentina while the first place team is already finishing the next stage in Shanghai he’s going to have issues (of course, they could just elminate people by phone but that may not be the best TV).