The Amazing Race > RFF's Amazing Race: Design Challenge
The Amazing Race: Design Challenge VIII - Final Round Design Show on Page 50!
Pi:
Posting individually to help get to the next page. :)
Nrh2110 - Lhasa, Tibet [Mountain]
Show content• Teams open the leg by taking an intra-China flight to Tibet. There’s lots to do here, so I’m excited to see this leg. Thanks for providing the actual screenshots of the flights this round.
• The Detour is Sells or Smells, both taking place in and around Barkhor Square. Sells is your basic vendor task, with teams having to hawk produce to make 100 yuan. How much produce is available for each team to sell? I would like some sort of stipulation in this task to prevent a team using the Ken & Gerard method of selling in bulk for the full target price. If you can get together a ton of produce and sell the lot for 100 yuan, it could make the task go by much more quickly than the other option. Nonetheless, haggling over a language barrier is sure to be challenging.
• Smells is a cultural task that is one of the few and far between Race tasks to have the sense of smell as a primary determinant. It’s hard to know how long this would take because we don’t know how many incense vendors exist in the square. Does the incense given have a decisively distinct smell? If not, finding the correct vendor might be random (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing).
• After a trip to Pabonka Hermitage, teams get a departure time for the morning. Immediately after the Overnight Rest, teams rip a Roadblock clue and one team member has to become a Sherpa. It’s simultaneously physical by forcing teams to hike with equipment at high altitude, yet detail-oriented with setting up the camp. What is the camp setup like? That would help me know how much stuff racers are carrying on their backs. I like the connection to the Sherpa way of life for this task.
• Sera Monastery is the location of the Head-to-Head. I like how you’ve gone away from the usual sort of task used in a Head-to-Head, and it’s a task that should be fun for TV. Is there an example of the questions that might be asked, or some type of video or transcript so we can see this debate happen? I also don’t like how the 15-minute penalty is served at the Pit Stop. The last two teams depart at the same time, then they have a better chance of getting to the Pit Stop at the same time (their taxis could easily follow each other, etc.). If the last team had to wait 15 minutes at the monastery, the team in front of them would be fighting on their own and the last team could have a better chance of surviving if the penultimate team slipped up in terms of navigating to Potala Palace or the Pit Stop. I’m not a big fan of the H2H being this close to the Pit Stop, either.
• The Potala Palace task has the physical part of the stair climbing and the memory/mental part of remembering the step count and ascertaining the correct year. What is the year and what is the number of steps? I’d like to see this in your notes. I don’t know the number of steps, so I don’t know whether this task will be easy to do over if at first they don’t succeed (low number of steps) or difficult to repeat (higher number of steps).
• I like how the Pit Stop is close to the last ARI. It’s a fine location.
I like your decision to explore an unvisited area in an oft-visited country: Tibet. The tasks had a good mountain theme, but some of them lacked detail. I’m worried that the placements of the HoO and the Face-Off could constrict teams. Those problems aside, several cultures appeared in the span of one leg, which worked out well. Your presentation got better as compared to Round 1, with better transportation notes and details as a whole. I have faith in you to continue improving round-by-round!
Pi:
elthemagnifico - Nias Island, Indonesia [Beach]
Show content• Teams begin in Medan and take a domestic Indonesian flight to reach Nias Island. I don’t know much about its geography or culture, so I’m excited to learn that through this leg.
• Teams pick up vehicles at the airport and get a banknote, directing them to Bawomataluo Village. I think it might be tough for teams to get directions on a cryptic clue that’s located 2.5 hours away, but the location does seem to be well-known among the locals.
• The Detour there is High Jump or High Lift. High Jump is a taxing physical task. I like how it involves the warrior spirit of the locals, but the task is really biased to people with long legs and/or natural athletic ability. Since the stones are the same for everyone, this task will especially be more difficult on average for women. Imagine Charla trying to do this, it would be impossible. It also could be potentially injury-prone if a racer were to fail the jump and crash into the stone.
• High Lift is a cultural assembly task, and I like it much better than High Jump. It can be performed fairly by most racers and I like how they have to parade the statue. I assume teams can enlist the help of locals for that part. I think the parading part will make for great TV.
• Teams then have another over 2 hour drive to Sirombu Beach. Learning the Silat routine is a nice way to feature an Indonesian martial art. The routine looks like it's neither too easy nor too hard, so I like the inclusion of this task.
• “Who wants to survive?” Talk about a direct question. This task involves local materials, but making an SOS sign at the spot of a terrible natural disaster feels so off-key. There has to be some better way to pay respect to the tsunami’s victims than this. I get that it’s in preparation for the future, but it’s still so weird. Also, if this were to be included, it would be better as a task with both team members participating. Skydiving is exciting, anyway.
• The Pit Stop and the transportation leading up to it has a nice beach vibe.
This leg highlighted a new location in Indonesia, and the tasks did relate to the local culture. However, I didn’t like the execution of some of the tasks, namely the High Jump detour and the SOS part of the Roadblock. The other tasks and all of the locations were fine, so there were still a lot of bright spots in this leg. I’ll be standing by to see what you bring in future rounds!
Pi:
ZBC Company - Mumbai, India [Beach]
Show content• Teams set off from chilly Finland to tropical India. Urban Asian legs can be very welcome, so excited for this one in Mumbai!
• The Bollywood ARI is an interesting concept, where each team member has a different role and they have to communicate. Then, it’s a reversal of most TAR tasks as the racers are the ones instructing the dance and the group is learning it. I like this task to shake up placements right off the bat. Good idea!
• The Speed Bump is also related to Bollywood, but it isn’t as exciting. Translating the script is a simple enough task for a Speed Bump, but it’s uneventful compared to the ARI.
• Your Face-Off is a typical sporting task, but it’s executed well. It also fits nicely with the beach theme. I wonder how long it will take the teams to score 10 points? Are the racers playing alongside locals to make full teams? I like how your Face-Off has a lot of tasks behind it so the last teams can still catch up.
• The Roadblock also corresponds to the beach theme. It’s a pretty simple swimming task, but it does have a tie-in to the religions of India. This task won’t dominate airtime, but it’s fine as a beach-related task.
• The Detour choices are Build It Up and Design It Up. Build It Up harkens back to the Voladores FF from TAR 3 Mexico in a weird way. I like how teams will have to navigate the streets to find their correct group, which will be chaotic. This is sure to bring a lot of energy to the leg and episode!
• Design It Up is interesting in the fact that teams have to memorize how the model looks, then go out and actually buy the clothes and accessories. Are teams given a list of shops to buy from? Also, five seconds seems like such a short amount of time to study the phone.
Your Pit Stop is good-looking, but I’m not seeing how it connects to the Beach theme you received.
There were a lot of good things in this design. Your presentation got better and more concise. The tasks delivered in this leg and would be captivating to watch on TV. There’s a ton of potential in urban India, and your design hit a lot of that. Happy to see you improve from the last round and can’t wait to see you improve further later on!
Pi:
BritishTARFan - Western Scotland [Mountain]
Show content• The leg begins in the Middle East and then teams read the clue that sends them to Glasgow, Scotland. Scotland has a great culture, so this could be a nice spot for a Europe Mountain leg.
• Rowing the boat to the loch isn’t the most exciting task, but I support the reasons why you included it.
• Ceilidh dancing is certainly culturally relevant to Scotland. I like how teams have to don the kilts for the task and for the entire leg. I wonder what driving in a kilt is like? :funny:
• Fort William is the Detour Decision Point for Find That Whisky or Climb That Mountain. Find That Whisky basically seems like a redux of the whisky barrels task we saw during TAR 22’s visit to Scotland. That task was fine, but this task seems too similar. Climb That Mountain is around a 5km footrace. While the location/backdrop of the task is nice (Ben Nevis), this task isn’t particularly interesting or Scottish. Running can be done as a task anywhere and there’s already a lot of running that happens on the normal racecourse anyway. The “surprises” don’t really enhance the task to me, being pelted with water and crawling through mud seem more suited to Survivor than the Amazing Race. I would have liked to see a more cultural Side B for this Detour, and since Find That Whisky is so physically intensive, maybe a less strenuous task here would make for a more balanced Detour.
• Achintree Farm is the venue for the Roadblock. Spear-throwing necessitates accuracy, and it’s a nice way to throw back to the time of the Celts. Even so, I would like to see additional photos or a video to supplement what you have in your design.
• Anyway, I really like the Pit Stop and I think a lot of viewers could recognize it from the movies it’s appeared in.
I had high expectations for this Scotland leg, and I think they were only met about halfway. There were a few tasks that really highlighted Scotland’s culture, but some tasks fell flat by being either repeats or too generic. That said, the locations were good for both Scotland and the mountainous theme. Keep finding your groove so you can get even better in the future!
Pi:
Results Show will be posted soon. Please, do not post while the show is ongoing!
Round 3 will begin after the Round 2 Results Show finishes.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version