Survivor: San Juan del Sur

Survivor: San Juan del Sur — Blood vs. Water, also known as Survivor: San Juan del Sur, is the 29th season of Survivor.

Development
The theme and name of the season were announced at the reunion show of. The production flew back to San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua, the same location where and  were filmed. Filming began June 2, 2014, and was completed on July 10. After filming wrapped, it was confirmed that the two upcoming seasons will have an all-new cast.

Originally, the season was set to have a 20-player cast. However, 48 hours prior to the start of filming, a member of an all-female pair failed a medical examination. Unable to find a replacement pair of the same gender composition in time, production was forced to start the game with the remaining nine pairs, ostensibly having an uneven ratio of males and females. A similar case occurred back in, where Mellisa McNulty was pulled from the game due to last-minute panic attacks. Former contestant and Survivor Live After Show host Parvati Shallow went to the production site as part of the press who conducted interviews to the contestants and wrote an online journal about her experience.

In an interview with Dalton Ross from Entertainment Weekly after the Cagayan finale, Jeff Probst initially stated that Redemption Island was slated to be in play. However, after the interview, last minute changes were discussed by Jeff and production to further innovate the upcoming season. In a more recent interview with Ross for EW Morning Live, which was held live on set, Probst revealed that they decided to shelve Redemption Island, which potentially misled the contestants, who were yet to be flown on location and listened to the prior interview. The set that was supposed to be the Redemption Island Arena would be rehashed for Exile Island, a twist long-unused since. Jeff teased: "none"

- We all started looking at it, and it started feeling like—I don’t know. I don’t know if Redemption Island is the right thing. And it would be the safe thing to do, because we knew it worked. I got the cards out and started looking at all the players in my living room and just started imagining: What else could you do with people who love each other that would really make it difficult? And we came up with an idea, and everybody puts their two cents in, and we formed a new idea. Instead of Redemption Island, we decided: We have this arena being built. What if instead of that, we use it for something else, something that will make Blood vs. Water a little more interesting. A little more bloody.

In another interview, Probst added that former The Amazing Race winner and avid Survivor fan Mike White heavily contributed to the shift from Redemption Island to Exile Island and the Redemption Island Duels became the "Hero Duels."

On August 13, 2014, editors temporarily halted the post-production process of the season and went on strike due to CBS preventing them to unionize which would give them pension plans and health benefits similar to other to the workers in Mark Burnett's other shows. The next day, an agreement was settled, and the editors concerned were allowed to unionize and went back to work, thus keeping the premiere to air on schedule.

Twists/Changes

 * Blood vs. Water: Nine pairs of castaways, each with a pre-existing relationship, will compete against each other for the million dollar prize. The pairs will be separated, assigning each member to opposite tribes. Unlike the first Blood vs. Water season, this season will have an all-new cast. Also, unlike the first season, Redemption Island will not be in play in San Juan del Sur.
 * Day Zero: A day before the actual game starts, the pairs will be sent out at sunset to different locations to live by themselves for the night. They will then all meet up to be officially welcomed by host Jeff Probst and start the game the next morning.
 * Exile Island: After an eleven season hiatus of the twist, Exile Island returns replacing the initial Redemption Island twist. This season's version of the twist would have its tribal Reward Challenges only be one-on-one duels between castaways. Before the tribe switch, however, the twist is that the ones that would face-off should be between loved ones. The winner of each duel wins reward for his/her tribe while the losing castaway would be sent to Exile Island, along with one of the winner's tribemates, where they will choose between two urns: one with a clue to the Hidden Immunity Idol buried on his/her camp, and the other with nothing.
 * Tribe Switch: When there were 14 castaways left in the game, there was a tribe switch, that puts four Hunahpu and three Coyopa castaways on each tribe.

Trivia

 * Based on the logo and the names of the tribes, the theme of the season appears to be inspired by Mesoamerican culture (predominantly, Aztec and Mayan).
 * The font use for this season's buff is Voodoohouse.
 * The removal of two castaways for medical reasons 48 hours before the start of the game resulted in an unbalanced cast, with ten males and eight females.
 * This is the first season since to have an uneven number of male and female castaways.
 * This is also the first season with an even number of contestants to have an uneven number of male and female castaways.
 * This is the first season to feature Exile Island since, after a hiatus of eleven consecutive seasons.
 * This season has the first cast to feature only 8 female contestants since Survivor: Tocantins.
 * With the Day Zero twist, this season, along with, are the second longest seasons in terms of number of days, lasting 39.5 days, following , which was filmed in 42 days instead of the standard 39.
 * This is the first season to have contestants with homophonic first names (names that are pronounced the same, but spelled differently), namely John Rocker and Jon Misch.
 * This is the first season with all new players to follow another season with all new players since.
 * This is the second odd-numbered season that did not have a yellow or gold colored tribe. held this distinction 11 years earlier.
 * Notably, both seasons started with a blue and orange tribe.