The Amazing Race 34, Episode 1

Los Angeles, CA (USA) - Munich, Bavaria (Germany)

The “new normal” of post-pandemic, COVID-endemic travel

[Claire and Derek, who finished first in the opening leg of The Amazing Race 34, assemble the puzzle pieces of a clue to their next destination on the roof of their rental car in Munich.]

If the COVID-19 pandemic is “over”, that would be because COVID-19 has become “endemic”. But that begs the question of what post-pandemic, COVID-endemic travel will look like.

Can Season 34 of The Amazing Race suggest any answers, or at least give us food for thought about this question?

Maybe, but not if we limit our scrutiny to what’s shown on the TV show.

Filming of the previous season, The Amazing Race 33, was interrupted in 2020 by the outbreak of COVID-19. Many impromptu mid-season changes — including changes to the cast and destinations — were made to enable production to resume a year and a half later. Almost inevitably, those changes and the impact of the pandemic on travel were acknowledged and discussed on camera. Cast members, people they talked to, and other on-camera bystanders were often, although not always, shown wearing masks.

This season has started out differently: There was no mention of COVID-19 in any of the narration or unscripted dialogue in this first episode. As the images at the top of this article from the broadcast of this episode make clear, members of the cast of The Amazing Race 34 had masks with them on location. But neither any of the cast members, nor any of the local people with whom they interacted, were shown wearing masks on camera, although there were a few fleeting on-camera glimpses of masked members of the TV production crew.

It wasn’t the intent or the responsibility of the producers of The Amazing Race to make an educational series about the “new normal” of international travel. Their customers are the TV networks around the world that license the show from its production company, and their advertisers. The producers are making and selling an entertainment product, not travel advice.

To their credit, the producers of The Amazing Race have a commendable track record of addressing other social issues, to the extent feasible in the context of prime-time for-profit entertainment. The Amazing Race has visited destinations that few tourists from the USA visit, perhaps most notably in Africa, and has consistently been ahead of the Hollywood norm of casting diversity, by any measure. The producers of the TV show have to pick what issues to foreground, and overt discussion of COVID-19 might have put off both some viewers and some advertisers.

The producers and crew of the race have even more motivation to somehow continue or resume travelling than most travellers — whatever risks, compromises, and changes, and whatever editing choices to sell the show, that may entail. It’s not their vacation but their livelihood, and for some their entire career. After 20 years and 34 seasons, The Amazing Race is not just a short-term gig but the only job some of the workers in the production team have ever known.

Out of sight doesn’t mean out of mind. The edited TV show may say nothing overt about the “new normal” of travel, but the production of this season of The Amazing Race was significantly influenced by concerns about COVID-19. The show did go on, but significantly changed.

You wouldn’t know it from watching TV or movies, but Hollywood has had, and continues to have, some of the strictest protocols for reducing the risk of COVID-19, rivaling (and sometimes exceeding) those of the health care industry. This is a business decision, not a political one. If one key actor gets sick, an entire production — for which a crew has been hired and assembled, location permits have been obtained, etc. — may have to be rescheduled or rewritten, at huge expense. Time on the set or on location is money! For example, the emcee of “The Amazing Race Australia” got COVID-19 and had to be quarantined in the middle of filming of Season 6 of that franchise of the show. Filming went on, but with a replacement host for the next four legs of the race.

Daily testing remains the norm for anyone working on a Hollywood sound stage or location shoot.

Some of those making decisions (including those about COVID-19 protocols) and taking an active part in location filming of The Amazing Race are old enough to be at significantly elevated risk from COVID-19. Elise Doganieri, the creator and co-producer of The Amazing Race, is “only” 55 years old, but her husband and co-producer, Bertram Van Munster, is 80.

[The producers of The Amazing Race, Bertram van Munster and Elise Doganieri, on location in Munich for filming of the first episode of The Amazing Race 34. Still from CBS Sunday Morning.]

Here are some of the changed features of travel as practiced in the production of The Amazing Race 34:

1. Travel by chartered plane rather than scheduled airline flights.
2. Surface travel by self-drive car, rather than by bus, train, or other public transit.
3. Outdoor rather than indoor activities. (All of the challenges in this leg of the race were outdoors.)
4. Face masks even outdoors, most of the time except when necessary on camera and on microphone (to capture clear voices and facial expressions).
5. Periodic COVID-19 testing (at least every few days while travelling).
6. Different choices of destinations. (More on that to come in future episodes of this season.)

Chartered planes aren’t an option for most travellers, although some people are choosing to avoid air travel altogether in favor of other means of transport.

Which of the rest of these choices are part of your “new normal” of travel, and which will remain so indefinitely?

You don’t have to make the same choices as the cast and crew of The Amazing Race. But it’s interesting to see what choices are made by travellers advised and accompanied by medical, safety, and COVID risk management professionals.

A promotional segment for The Amazing Race 34 on the CBS Sunday Morning show gives a “behind the scenes” look at the production, including the use (again) of a chartered plane, and the prevalence of mask-wearing on and off location and even when it wasn’t mandatory.

[Camera and sound crews filming the send-off of The Amazing Race 34 in Munich. Click here or click image for larger version.]

In the quick take of the film and sound crews at the starting line captured in the still image above, most but not all of the crew members are wearing masks, suggesting that mask-wearing was a choice most of them made, off-camera, and not a requirement.

Using self-drive cars reduced the risk of exposure to COVID-19, but also made it possible to avoid showing cast members wearing masks. Masks are required on trains throughout Germany and on public transit vehicles in Munich. So any use of these means of transport, at least in these jurisdictions, would have made on-camera mask-wearing unavoidable.

The same plane was chartered from the same company and base in the U.K. for all of this season of The Amazing Race as was used for the latter portion of the previous season. That plane doesn’t come to the USA often, so we had a very strong indication that filming of this season was about to start even before the plane got to Los Angeles to pick up the cast and crew to fly them to Munich.

Publicly-available flight-tracking data and the use of the same plane for the entire race made it easier than ever before for fans of The Amazing Race to track the route of the race in real time. The route and choices of destinations were very different than on previous seasons of The Amazing Race, but to avoid spoilers I’ll postpone that discussion until later in the season.

More on post-pandemic, COVID-endemic travel:

• Face masks for travel
• COVID-19 testing for travel
• COVID-19 and travel insurance
• Travel, the autism spectrum, and the pandemic