Absolutely loved this leg. This leg had everything I could want in a leg and more. This leg had an airport scramble, a standby flight, a delayed flight, a gorgeous location, tough Detour options, Detour switching, a difficult Roadblock, a boat race to the mat, lost gnome, and Dalmatians. Coming into this season, I was not a fan of casting Nicole & Victor, though there were far more worse choices in casting recent BB showmances. The past legs have done nothing to make me like Nicole. Leg 7, she cried at the mat to garner sympathy from other racers. Leg 8, she acted indecisive at the U-Turn Vote, made Victor vote, and complained when he did vote. This leg, I couldn't stand her whining with the "line cutting." There was nothing at that counter that marked one line, and if there's one thing I hate on TAR it is people complaining about lines. I didn't like it on TAR 4 & 16. With that said, I loved the flight scramble at the start of the leg. While teams have booked some flights this season, they've all ended up on the same flights. This leg we got several flights. I also loved Split in this leg. Croatia is a stunning location and one that I would love to visit. Previous visits to Croatia across franchises have used similar locations and tasks, but this leg gave us a wide variety of locations with the beaches, cave church, Roman sites, and the harbor. There were also several creative tasks to go along with this location. I'm also stunned by the amount of switching that occurred even if it led to the demise of Chris & Bret. This was a great episode overall with my only complaint being the editing gaffs that occurred (Naming the wrong beach for the first task & displaying the wrong arrival time for the third flight), but that doesn't lessen my enjoyment.
Leo planning his entire family on the ticket agents.
Ticket agent leaving on the dot.
"Hello. Good news. We don't know the poem."
Afghanimal's taxi driver calling them crazy.
"Traveling along with our friend the Roaming Gnome. We'll go back on the boat."
Bret thinking he'll never make detective because of the coins and then going for a beer.
Punch & Bread: Lumped these two together because they were both two simple tasks that mainly added more destinations to this leg.
Motion: Loved this task. The poem was difficult enough that teams could easily slip up, and the boat rides and teams' dramatic speaking led to fun moments.
Ocean: This seemed like a simple task, yet it created so much drama with switching.
Marching Orders: Looked cool visually and it was a cool mental task to end the leg.
Dinghy: Much like last week, I liked that they added an extra step to reach the Pit Stop instead of just taking a taxi.
5/5/