The route is not very inspiring. It's basically the Orient Express route, only with a leg from Brest, a couple of kinks for controls and a mountain stage in Italy. Sure, it's a long, challenging ride, but the TCR is supposed to be an adventure, taking you to some places you've never been before, and way out of your comfort zone - and this doesn't really do that.
I can sort of understand why they have done it this way but I'm not sure their thinking is right - it's not guaranteed that Schengen borders are more likely to be open than those in Eastern Europe, and if some borders are closed anywhere in Europe, it's unlikely to go ahead anyway.
It's a bit shorter, which is significant. They are saying 3,700km. A fast rider (ie KA or JH) could probably do this in under a week and it is more like a week and a half rather than two weeks for a mid-pack rider such as me. That doesn't sound much but, from my experience of doing long stuff, each extra day makes it a lot harder mentally.
There's a lot of France. France is great but it's not an adventure. It does have a lot of roads, though, as does Italy, so there are likely to be a lot more routing options than a normal TCR.
I've not ridden in Italy below the Po Valley so that is more interesting (although it looks like there will be a slog across the Po Valley between controls 2 and 3). Riding across Greece is kind of interesting. But lack of Balkans is what stops it from being a proper TCR IMHO. And having a long ferry that near the end kind of spoils the race element. I did that ferry the other way when I was a student - took about 20 hours.
I am pleased not to have to do that long, rough descent in Romania, and deal with Romanian drivers altogether. But Italians are pretty bad for close passes.
But having the start in France is clearly not a good idea - groups of 20 staggered at 30 min intervals. So if there are 300 the last group would be 7 hours behind the first! A TT-style start with 1 minute intervals would be better from a distancing point of view and only take 5 hours. Or cut it to 30 seconds and have pairs going together - get everyone off on their own in a couple of hours.
Lots of gushing on Facebook from newbies who applaud anything, but I've heard of a few people thinking about giving it a miss. Chris White made an interesting suggestion - get inside the time limit without using the ferry. Looks a bit tough though, I had a quick look on the map and it seems to add 1000-1200km.