Jeff Probst reveals scrapped ‘Survivor’ finale vote delivery scene (exclusive)

Tonight, a new Survivor champion will be crowned during the Survivor 48 finale. Either Kyle Fraser, Kamilla Karthigesu, Joe Hunter, Eva Erickson, or Mitch Guerra will become a millionaire when Jeff Probst reads the final votes.

Unfortunately, he will not be transporting those votes from overseas back to a live reading in the United States. And even more unfortunate is the fact that the host will not be taking all manner of bizarre transportation to deliver said votes.

Probst’s hilarious cross-continental vote delivery first appeared in season 4, Survivor: Marquesas when the host hailed a New York City taxicab to take him and the voting urn to Central Park for the big winner reveal. Probst then upped his game for season 6, Survivor: The Amazon, when he jet skied all the way from Brazil to the Statue of Liberty and then hopped on an NYC subway train to midtown Manhattan.

But he wasn’t done. Not yet. His true pièce de resistance was for season 9, Survivor: Vanuatu, when Probst bushwacked through the jungle, then hopped on a small propeller plane that somehow — like the jet ski — had enough gas to take him all the way to the United Sates. He then jumped out of the plane and skydived into the desert before hopping on a waiting motorcycle, which he then drove onto the CBS studio lot in Los Angeles. This was truly epic, Tom Cruise-level stuff… and before Tom Cruise did it himself!

Sadly, that was the last epic Survivor vote delivery that made it to air. But not the last one the show attempted. Probst told Entertainment Weekly back in 2014 that they tried to film a scene for a finale in which the host jumped into a canoe and paddled to Venice, Calif., only to then hop onto land at a skate park and ask a kid for his board. The problems began once Probst touched the skateboard. “It was terrible,” Probst tells EW. “I still remember the guy that we hired to teach me tried to get me to an on Ollie. He’s like ‘You just pop the board, you catch it,’ and I f—ing pop the board right in my shin.”

While the host attempted to dig deep after that inauspicious beginning, after a while, his instructor had seen enough. “After 90 minutes, he said, ‘I don’t think you’re going to get it,’” Probst reveals, and the entire concept was scrapped.

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL! Probst reveals that there was yet another aborted attempt at an incredible vote reveal, and it sounds positively ridiculous in the most wonderful way. Survivor fans… prepare yourselves.

“I was going to rappel out of a helicopter.”
Wait… what’s that? Come again?
“I was going to rappel out of a helicopter.”
Hold on, people, because it gets even better.
“It was going to be on Madison Square Garden.”

STOP THE PRESSES!!!! Jeff Probst was going to rappel out of a helicopter onto Madison Square Garden?!?

“We got permission to land on Madison Square Garden in a helicopter,” he explains. “I would rappel out of the helicopter down to the roof and then do a Batman-walk down past the windows and then go inside a window.”

First off, I think we all need a second to catch our collective breath. But judging by the admittedly insane intel we just received, Probst must be talking about the reunion for Survivor: All-Stars (season 8), which indeed took place in the theater at Madison Square Garden. So why were fans ultimately denied this incredible reality TV action montage that would have been burned into our brains until the end of time? The host reveals all.

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“We get in L.A. to go rehearse it,” recalls Probst. “We were going to a place where they had firemen training with big buildings. And so we were using these buildings, and I’m walking with the stunt team and the guy says, ‘I got to say, man, I’m really impressed. This is one of the most difficult stunts to do.’”

That certainly got Probst’s attention. “I said, ‘What?!’ And he said, ‘Oh yeah, you’re doing something gnarly. That’s a helicopter! And you’re going to rappel out of it.’ And I said, ‘I don’t want to do it.’ And we had a whole team there! And I was like, ‘No, I don’t want to do it.’”

And what was the stuntman’s reaction to Probst pulling the plug? “He goes, ‘I think that was a wise choice. Like, ‘You are an idiot. You can barely walk!’ And I see sometimes people jumping out of a helicopter into the water and he said, ‘That’s super different. You’re just jumping into the water from 10 feet. You’re going to rappel out of a helicopter. That’s a very different element.’ So that was the end of that.”

On the minus side, we missed out on what was sure to be the greatest scene in television history. On the plus side, Probst remained alive to host 40 more seasons of Survivor… and counting.