The Bachelor Creator Spills Secrets from Inside the Mansion

Things are up close and personal on The Bachelor. "Cameras swooped in at 6 a.m. to film me getting out of bed," Courtney Robertson wrote in her tell-all I Didn't Come Here to Make Friends. The cameras come in early and they don't leave throughout the day. This constant presence gives a double meaning to the "alone time" provided in a Fantasy Suite. "It wasn't romantic so much as it was a breath of freedom," Andrew Firestone says in PEOPLE's Bachelor 20th anniversary book. "It was an opportunity to relax and exhale."

Safety first! Before anyone arrives at the Bachelor mansion, they're required to go through extensive screenings that can include psychological evaluations, STD tests and questions about the past. Bachelor Sean Lowe was even asked if he had ever sent nude photos.

While there's less drinking now than there was in early seasons, show creator Mike Fleiss confirms that yes, "Drinks are available."

There's a reason it seems like everything moves so fast on The Bachelor – it does. "You spend a total of less than 48 hours one-on-one with the person you pick," Jason Mesnick guesses. However, Fleiss says that the amount of time each Bachelor gets to spend with his two finalists is "pretty substantial," and much more than it was six or seven years ago.

There's a reason all the food on those dates remains untouched: no one looks sexy eating, and the mics will pick up all that chomping. "We would be given beautiful food," Sean Lowe writes in his book For the Right Reasons. "This was just for show."

As for the ladies of the mansion getting along, Fleiss says it really depends on the circumstances – and how much of a catch the Bachelor is. "When the man is sincerely looking for a wife, then it's sort of every woman for herself."

It may be The Bachelor mansion, but things can get cramped. The girls sleep in bunk beds and share just two bathrooms between all of them (imagine the waits during the first few episodes!). Although the Bachelor's digs are a bit more spacious, they can get a little lonely. "When it was dark everybody left, so it was me in this big house by myself," Firestone recalls. "It was weird to be one person living there."