Are We There Yet?: World Adventure is a live-action preschool travel adventure series that takes viewers on 39 brand new, globe-trotting adventures across ten countries and 27 cities. For the second season, two new sets of child hosts welcome children to explore the world with them. Instead of the first season's brother/sister sibling pairs, this time brothers TJ (8) and Tristan (6), and sisters Joanna (7) and Julia (6), capture their experiences in places like China, Russia, New Zealand, Italy, Iceland, Sweden, Turkey, and Egypt, as well as the US and Canada.
"The magic of the show is because younger kids haven't fully adopted their own culture, they're sponges to everyone else's," said producer J.J. Johnson during an interview on the TV, eh? show on BlogtalkRadio. "So to be exposed to all these cool, different, interesting things that other people do broadens their horizons."
"A lot of the trick is passing the reins to them as much as possible," he added. "What catches their interest catches the interest of the kids at home."
Joking that the series is ad libbed "in a nightmarish kind of way," Johnson revealed that "things fail spectacularly that I thought they would love." On the other hand, during the first season, a scheduled ten-minute play break in Kenya turned into a two-hour filming session when the child hosts couldn't be torn away from a simple stick game. "That's great, that's the point of the show," he added, saying he keeps the cameras rolling just in case.
"You never know when they're going to say something spectacular or brilliant," he said of the sibling hosts. "Invariably we'll shut it off and they'll say something great or ask a brilliant question. I'll start rolling again and ask them to repeat it, and they're like, 'I already know the answer.'"
The unscripted nature of the show not only lends itself to greater authenticity, but captures moments that couldn't be scripted. For the new season, the cameras were rolling when TJ and Tristan took their first ever plane trip, and one brother said, "I can see heaven. I can see God dancing."
"Of course I'm punching the cameraman, 'did you get it, did you get it?'" Johnson laughed. "You can't write that, or the look in his eyes. I don't think there's better programming out there when you get those moments."
It's not just the hosts or the audience whose horizons are expanded through the series. "Everything we've ever been told about each country has squarely been proven wrong," said Johnson, referring to dire warnings about some of their travel destinations. The production team has even worked with UNICEF to access developing countries and determine how to expose children to positive experiences in poverty-stricken areas.
"You can't believe everything you hear, but have to go out and experience it," he asserted. And for children who can't yet do that for themselves, Are We There Yet?: World Adventure brings the experiences to them.
The second season premieres Monday, September 1 at 12:10 p.m. ET on Treehouse TV.
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