And I still say the two single biggest improvements to the game would be:
A) When it is necessary to bunch everybody at the airport to start a leg, don’t apply the staggered start until they get through customs on the other side. They did this last season when taking a bus ride from Germany to France. The bus didn’t bunch them, when they got to the next country they started from the bus with the appropriate gaps for how they finished the last leg in Germany.
What we don’t see in the airport bunching and restarts off the plane is customs. How many times has a team been screwed because a customs agent decided to give them the full interrogation and bag search?
No more luck of the draw on taxis. Whenever cars are to be used but the players aren’t allowed to drive themselves TAR should provide private cars and drivers who have clear instructions that all they do is drive. It is up to the players to nagivate them to the destination. If the players don’t say “turn left here” then you don’t turn. If they don’t say “stop” you don’t stop. If they don’t know what instructions to give you pull over and wait for them to figure it out. (Obvious exceptions for safety, of course, no driving into Lake Geneva because they didn’t tell you to turn at the T intersection.)
I don’t have a cite, but IIRC, the teams are held after clearing customs until everyone has cleared customs. They might stagger the teams based on what time that they actually got to the customs (to account for premium seats on the airplane). I read this someplace.
And I do agree with getting rid of the taxis and replace them with paid drivers.
And even though I played the devils advocate on the OP’s question, I do think that the clues should be a little more cryptic than “Fly to Madrid, Spain” Give them a cyptogram that they must solve correctly before being allowed to proceed.
The other problem is that those type of clues don’t usually have the intended effect. They are less about who can solve the puzzle, and more about who can find a knowledgeable person to do it for them.
If that is true then that’s good. I assumed it wasn’t because in this last season the last episode has a situation where the winning team gained some significant advantage by talking a flight attendant into letting them into first class from which they were able to get off the plane well ahead of the other teams.