- “A Detour is a choice between two tasks, each with its own pros and cons.”-Phil Keoghan
Upon arriving at a Detour, teams are given several details about both tasks, but they may need to travel a short distance by foot or other means to the different task locations. One task is typically less physically-demanding but is tedious or requires some amount of time or thinking to complete, while the other is usually a more physically-demanding or frightening option that, depending on the team's ability, may take less time to complete. The decision on which task to attempt lies solely with the team.
Placement[]
Jet & Cord choosing their Detour in Season 16.
In the first three seasons, a Detour preceded a Roadblock in every leg. Since Season 4, however, the order in which these tasks have occurred has varied with each leg.
Several Detours have had unique arrangements, such as the one in the first leg in Season 5, where failure to complete one option (based solely on luck at gambling) required the team to complete the other, which was a more physical task, and the Detour in the sixth leg in Season 26, where the Detour a team would perform was determined by the spin of a roulette wheel.
Switching[]
A team may choose to switch tasks as many times as they wish with no penalty other than the time lost in attempting the tasks and traveling between task locations. Because of this freedom to choose between tasks, the penalty for not completing either task is significant (see Penalties and time credits). Depending on the Detour, if a team returns to a Detour after switching, they may resume from where they last stopped instead of starting over again.
Variants[]
Blind Detour[]
In Season 25, a variant of the Detour was introduced in the eighth leg, in which teams are given their clues for the Detour, without information about either task, except for the location and the names of each task. The information on the tasks is only given upon arrival at the location of the task they have chosen.
Fork in the Road[]
- Main article: Fork in the Road
In the first leg in Season 37, another variant of the Detour was introduced in which teams had to choose between two tasks and follow that route for the rest of the leg. Teams are given information on each task prior to making their choice, with each route only being able to be chosen by a limited number of teams. Once teams have made their choice of which route to take, they may not switch to the other route.
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