In The Amazing Race, teams of two race around the world, completing challenges around along the way. They have to deal with jet lag, flight delays, and everything else that comes with traveling. Some teams have lost their passports, and one team even got into a car accident after struggling to drive stick shift in Botswana.

But some viewers have thought that this drama seems to be a little too good to be true, and rumors of the show being scripted have followed Amazing Race for a while. But ahead of the Wednesday premiere of the new season, host Phil Keoghan is here to set things straight. In an appearance on the podcast Reality Life with Kate Casey, Keoghan was asked about how things work on the show.

He replied, “I’ve had fans say to me, ‘Oh you must just choose when you want a non-elimination or an elimination,’ and I have to explain to them. Can you imagine if you [he or the producers] suddenly just said, ‘I love this team let’s make it a non-elimination.’ Where are you going to find the extra hotel room, the extra flight, the extra logistics, the extra car for the challenge, the extra donkey that you need for the challenge? You can’t just make this stuff up as you’re going along. It comes with months and months of planning.”

Keoghan also mentioned that the reality showdown on the show “exceeded his expectations.”

“I know that Race fans and Survivor fans and Big Brother fans have wanted for a long time to see this reality mashup, and I have to say initially I was like ‘Ok I don’t really know how this is going to go,’ but it exceeded my expectations, because these Survivor and Big Brother teams are really like fish out of water characters because they have no idea. They have been competing in a house where their world is the four walls of the Big Brother house, or they’ve been on an island where they’re essentially in their own world.”