"With the reaction that we got from the family version, people clearly made a statement that they wanted that international element in the show," Keoghan said. "I think it showed that the places are as much stars in the show as the people themselves. People were missing that exotic element — that fish-out-of-water element where people were completely and utterly dumbfounded as to what to do because of culture shock and language barriers. They missed that. And I think that is a huge hook for us."

While they're always a bit vague about exactly where the race takes the contestants, we do know that, in addition to South America, they're headed for Russia, Japan and somewhere in the Middle East.

"For me, personally, I love to see the teams going to places we never get to see in mainstream media. . . . It's always a big eye-opener for these teams to go to someplace that is just very different from their local community," Keoghan said. "There's one location that we get to in the Middle East where the teams are immersed in a daily task that a lot of the local people have to go through. And it's great to see teams that are used to going down to the 7-Eleven suddenly having to cope with living life in a completely different way."

Whereas "Amazing Race" is going back to the tried and true.

"We're going back to our original form. . . . We know that our audience loves that brand," Tassler said. "We just tried something different, and we're going back to what I think everybody is really looking forward to."

Thank goodness.

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E-mail: pierce@desnews.com