Yuku free message boards

1) Season 5-crossed the equator six times, visited every inhabited continent. Loved: St. Petersburg, Uruguay (perhaps the best premiere ever), Argentina 1 & 2, Dubay, Egypt, Kenya/Tanzania, Philippines 1, Canada, Dallas. Meh: India (Kolkata didn't seem to mess with the racers' minds as, say, New Delhi or Mumbai), New Zealand (a little generic, although ZORBing was awesome), Philippines 2 (reminded me a bit of Season 1's Raile/Pai Plong Thailand leg, although the racers scrambling for the top 3 spots certainly made up for it)

2) Season 9 - great jumps from Brazil-Russia then from Oman-Australia. Even though basically all the locations were spoiled before the race, I don't believe I saw anyone who accurately predicted the race course, which ended up being pretty random. Loved: Sao Paulo (interesting urban atmosphere though certainly not on par with TAR2's Rio), Moscow, all of Germany, Sicily 1, Rome, Oman, Australia 2, Thailand, Japan, Alaska, Denver, THE SNOWY FINISH LINE. Meh: Brazil 2 (a little too country), Greece (a little too generic), Sicily 2 (YOu can only do so much with Sicily), Australia 1.

3) Season 6 - random African legs were great, and Europe was done decently, with offbeat locations such as Corsica, Hungary, and Scandinavia. Every leg visited a different country until the next to last two in China.

4) Season 3 - although on a map it may look like they concentrated a lot on Western Europe, the variety of tasks and gorgeous locales (Torre de Belem, Rheinfalls)made every country they visited memorable. Vietnam 2, though, seemed too much like a "filler leg", a leg that had to be made to fulfill the quota of 13 legs.

5) Season 1 - did a good job of, when racers were just getting accustomed to a place, to send them somewhere completely different (Zambia-France, Italy-India). Thailand 2, though, was just a bit of a bore. Also could have used some sort of intermediate destination between Alaska and New York.

6) Season 2 - although there was zero Europe, the southern hemisphere was being done beautifully until they had four straight legs of Oceania, with the two New Zealand ones running together in my memory. Several places were also visited for the second season in a row (S. Africa, Thailand, China, Alaska). The final episode, however, with the jump from "the steamy tropics" (Hawaii) to the "frigid north" (Alaska) was well done.

7) Season 4 - Gaah, 5 Europe legs, 2 india legs, 2 malaysia legs, a korea leg, 2 australia legs, Hawaii, and we're done! The only completely new countries were Korea and Holland (and given that it was only the fourth season, they could have gone to much more). The only really well-done legs I can think of are Venice (sans pre-roadblock bunch), Austria (very locale-appropriate tasks), and Korea. The final stadium task made up for the crappiness of Phoenix.

8) Season 7 - Badly done. Four S. America legs, each one a copy of each other, followed by 3 Africa legs, the last two also being copies of each other, then 2 India segments that, again, seemed like copies of each other. 8 straight episodes of brown, dusty, less than exciting places that could have been sufficient for 1 or 2 episodes each. Count me as one of the few that liked the originality of the going out then coming back, but some of these earlier legs could have been replaced by a leg or 2 more of Europe, or even somewhere offbeat like, say, Tibet.

9) Season 8 - Ok, for 2 seconds I considered putting this above Season 7, but then I thought, wouldn't I still rather have an actual trip around the world rather than a trip around the continent? Alabama-Mississippi-Louisiana will probably go down in TAR infamy, as well as the four straight episodes of "the West", all of which, again, seemed like copies of each other. Canadian final leg, though, was probably one of the best done final legs.

My ideal TAR course:

Leg 1 - Washington DC to Bogota, Colombia (it's not that bad of place, really!)
Leg 2 - Bogota to Salvador, Brazil (a really spicy place)
Leg 3 - Salvador to Antanarivo, Madagascar
Leg 4 - Madagascar to Chennai (Madras), India
Leg 5 - Chennai to Melbourne, Australia
Leg 6 - Melbourne to Easter Island
Leg 7 - Easter Island to Ushuaia, Argentina (with potential opportunity to visit Antarctica)
Leg 8 - Ushuaia to Hell, NOrway ("Go to Hell....Norway")
Leg 9 - Hell to Dublin, Ireland
Leg 10 - Dublin to Kiev, Ukraine
Leg 11 - Kiev to Nepal/Tibet
Leg 12 - Nepal/Tibet to Sapporo, Japan
Leg 13 - Sapporo to [random US pacific island] to Washington DC

As you can see, it's actually two trips around the world. Killer Fatigue for sure