It was a blazing hot December day in Jupiter, Florida, when my mother and I joined an endless line of prospective hopefuls. Every single person in line was seeking to gain a spot on America’s favorite game show, Wheel of Fortune.
A few weeks before, I had been scrolling through my Facebook feed when I noticed a post stating that the Wheel of Fortune bus would be in South Florida looking for future game players. The bus would be in Jupiter on Dec. 12, which was the day after I arrived home! Thankfully, all of my exams finished before Reading Days, so I had already intended on arriving home early. I immediately texted my mom and told her that we were both going to audition because that’d give us double the chance of getting on the show. At first she was reluctant because she is not even a fan of having her photo taken, so she didn’t want to be even potentially seen on national television. I eagerly talked about how exciting and how much of a bonding experience trying out would be, so she agreed to go with me to the audition.
Saturday morning came, and I was so excited to be heading to Jupiter. I had gotten my hair done that morning and was dressed in a cute new sundress, ready to answer any question I was given. To my surprise, the audition was nothing like what I had expected. We filed behind a line of cars before driving up to the top floor of a parking garage. There were hundreds — maybe even thousands — of people there. We discovered the outdoor amphitheater where auditions were being held and tried to figure out how the process worked. I went up to one of the employees of the show, and they directed us to a line by the side of the stage.
My mom and I rushed over to the line full of sweaty, loud people. The line got longer as the seconds ticked by. We quickly learned that auditions were very different than we had expected. Rather than each person having an opportunity to audition, we were given a small blue card that we were told to fill out with our name and interests. After waiting in line for about an hour among all of the other excited possible contestants, we were able to drop our card off into a box. The audition process was completely random, in that the people who were given the chance to audition were selected randomly every few minutes.
Those whose names were called got to go on stage for a quick five-minute gameplay. They had the opportunity to spend two minutes introducing themselves to try to get the producers attention, and then they had to work on solving the Wheel of Fortune puzzle onstage. Unfortunately, neither my mom nor I were randomly drawn to participate in the game, but we learned a lot in those few hours of waiting.
I first learned that Wheel of Fortune has an amazing marketing team. By thousands of people filling out the cards, they had the chance to learn so much about their audience and could email people now that they had their contact information. The second thing I learned was that the audition process is not at all as glamorous as it may seem. We could have shown up in workout clothes and had the same chance of going on stage as we did dressed up in cute outfits.
Although we were disappointed that neither of our names were called, we had a great time watching the mock games and learning about the audition process. We were told that people who didn’t have an opportunity to do the mock game may still receive a call back to the second audition.
Well, I’m still waiting for that phone call… Fingers crossed!
Photo courtesy of Spencer Harvey