Exactly.. i saw the route and was like.. TAR used to be 1 new country/location for one episode. Now we're getting 2 India, 2 Australia and 2 China this season?
That's like half the season and only 3 countries? And it doesn't help that India and China has been so overly, heavily used for the past 392428409848 seasons.
Not forgetting that the last episode is in the USA. And i remembered it used to be such a big thing for TAR to visit new locations and they'll keep the route a secret.. now they don't even care and seemed to be focusing more on team dynamics.
Joab,
For not the first time I will express a starkly different attitude than you. Yes, AR18 is revisiting Australia, India and China. Here is the land area of those countries:
China 3.72 MM sq.miles
Australia 2.97 MM sq.miles
India 1.27 MM sq.miles
Russia is the world's largest country in area, Canada is a surprising (to me) second, China 3rd, US 4th, Brazil 5th, Australia 6th, India 7th. I personally have been on a huge arc through China by rail, most of India by rail and just a small 300 mile stretch of the northeastern Queensland Coast by bus. The list of interesting sights that have not yet been visited by any Amazing Race in those countries are astounding. Here are a few examples with the largest population:
China - Guangzhou, Shenzen, Tianjin, Chongqing, Dongguan, Nianjing, Wuhan (note all of these are larger than all U.S. metro areas except New York, Los Angeles and Chicago)
India - Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad
Australia - Hobart, Adelaide (airport transfer point in AR2 does not count), Alice Springs, Uluru, Melbourne, Canberra
Plus there are many smaller cities that provide reasons for amazing Races to visit. Having the Amazing Race visit those countries instead of a new country is perfectly OK with me. The fact that AR18 only adds Liechtenstein to the list of countries visited by amazing Races is not at all a disappointment to me as long as the places that are visited are interesting.
I expect AR18 visits to Broken Hill, Ljjiang, Varanasi, and Zermatt to be very interesting. Of that group, I have only been to Varanasi and Zermatt but can assure all AR18 viewers that both are fascinating places. So, I suggest that the country list may now be an obsolete yardstick by which to measure the variety of Amazing Race routes. You should look beyond the country list and examine the details ow where a race actually goes.