This is a post that is at least 17 years in the making...I finally made it on the show! I'm the guy who played Plinko in this episode!
I was super active on this forum back in Season 35 - Bob's last season! (R.I.P.) - so maybe a few members on the board from the olden days will remember me. I stopped posting here as life got a little busier, but I never gave up on my dream on getting on The Price is Right!
Here's my story:
With audiences coming back this season and a trip to visit my friend in Las Vegas already planned, I was able to snag two tickets for the third taping on August 9th. We woke up at 6AM to drive out to Los Angeles and got in around 1PM and hopped in line. We only had line vouchers, but ended up being numbers 99 and 100.
Gina (from the showcase!) and her fiancé were 101 and 102, so we got to talk them a lot while we were waiting to get into the studio. They had previously attended 4 tapings at the Bob Barker Studio, so they had a lot of fun stories to tell!
We waited outside for about three hours and then eventually went inside to get our name tags. Apparently, "Christopher" is such a pain for them to fit onto the name tag, they have a pre-made stack of "Christopher" name tags to hand out so they don't have to write them on demand!
We went up the waiting room and watched an old episode. At some point during this, they pulled out our row of about 10 people to do the interviews. I was really nervous about this part, but I guess it went okay! When it was my turn, I talked about where I was from, and my shirt, and the "dream book" I made when I was a kid. It seemed like there were a lot of other interesting people there at that taping, but our little group did pretty well, including me, Gina, and also Edward (from the First Four).
It was really hot and humid that day in L.A. and the AC inside the church was terrible, so I remember drinking a lot of water before the taping to cool down and then also a lot of coffee to stay awake after getting up so early! (I ultimately regretted both.)
When we got inside the studio, they let us sit over on the left side where George is. We ended up sitting next to a seat filler, who was getting paid $30 for being there that day! But, honestly, at this point, being inside the studio was such a rush. I was excited to be there and to see everything...it was insane!
It was the last taping of the day and they seemed in a rush to get things going. The actual taping didn't start until after 6:00 PM. They called the First Four down and then Drew came out and it so electric. At this point, part of me was like "okay, maybe you won't get picked", so I just settled in to enjoy the show and tried to help Gina the best I could with Flip Flop, and then...
I saw my name on the cue card! I'm pretty sure the first thing I shouted was "this is insane!" and then ran down.
My bid for the telescope was okay. I would have ended up stopping where Luchara did in That's Too Much (as would have most of the audience)...the losing streak continues!
The TV was slightly more challenging, because the price of TVs can be so variable, it was hard to tell what brand the TV was, and the two people before me bid within the range I would have. I said $999, which Drew heard as $900, and we ended up having to refilm the bidding for this item after the last pricing game. The TV turned out to be really expensive! The audience was screaming "NOW" after the two "THENS" were revealed, but I don't think Tabitha could hear us.
This is when I asked someone if I could go to the bathroom and they said "I'm not the bathroom person!"...but I never figured out who the bathroom person was!
Before the 4th IUFB, they put down the big Race Game curtain and also blocked off Door 3 with another curtain...I could sense something big might be up next. I was bidding last, and things couldn't have worked out more perfectly. There's no way those headphones were going to be less than $400 (or even $500!).
I went up on stage, met Drew, then George said I was going to play Plinko! I joked with Drew that I would just buy a car with the money.
But the small prizes ended up being trickier than I expected! One thing I didn't realize until I was actually on the show is how far away the prizes are relative to the contestant. It seemed like I was at least 20-30 feet away from the items. Drew actually moved me to a different position when George was describing them so I could get a better view, but it was still hard (compared to seeing them up close on TV) to get a sense of how nice an item was or what features it had. It's also not super easy to focus on George's description, so you're going off slightly incomplete information.
I ended going back-and-forth a couple of times in my head, but on both of the ones I got wrong, I ended up relying on the old "pick the last number if it's 5 or 0; else pick the first number" rule, which maybe isn't as true as it once was! Also, a lot of the audience, including my (former!) friend, were saying "5" for the wine opener!
But it was really cool getting to play Plinko. It's one of the few games that looks different for the contestant than the audience...walking up the stairs and seeing what the board looks like from the top was such a cool moment!
The third chip I dropped actually got stuck on a peg, so Drew had to bring out the Plinko wand! When Manuela was bringing the chip back up to the top, I took a step back...and nearly fell off the back the of the Plinko board! All that is keeping you up there is a small handrail and, being tall, it felt like, for a second, I was going to flip right over it. The "I'm okay"-looking reaction from when my second chip hit zero was actually edited in from when I almost fell off, haha!
The editors left in the part in at the end where Drew said I dropped the chips perfectly (which I appreciate!), but I was a little bummed I couldn't get one of them to bounce into the $10,000 slot!
I left the stage and went over to the corner of the audience where the contestants sit and watched the other two pricing games. It felt like everyone was dying when Hannah picked 4 as the last digit, but another thing I realized after being on stage is that it can be hard to see the audience from the stage because you have a lot of cameras in the way (and, also, because you are focusing on your game!). The Dice Game win was really nice and prevented a wipeout!
When it came time for the Showcase Showdown, I just spun it as hard as I could and hoped for a good result! I'm still not convinced that you can really finesse the wheel to get it to land where you want...you don't get a practice spin, so you really have no idea how much force to apply. But 95 cents was great!
I was super excited to be in the showcase with my line buddy Gina...we had survived the whole day together! We hugged after the Showcase Showdown and we chatted a bit while we were at the podiums before the Showcase. The producer came by and gave us a note to not think about the prices of the items as they are shown to us.
And, then, the Showcase! The first thing they showed was a pool table and my first thought was "that's probably $5,000!", followed by, "oh wait, we weren't supposed to do that!". The Honda Accord at the end was a really nice car (for a daytime show).
I've always thought it was better to pass the first showcase if you have the option, because you can get some information from the bid of the other contestant. If they are way over, you could technically bid $1 and win. If you think they are close, you might want to make a riskier bid on your showcase to also get close.
So, in the moment, I was likely going to pass the first showcase, even though I really liked the Accord! A pool table would be super fun, but I don't exactly have anywhere to put it. But then Drew said, "your childhood dream was to win a car, right?" and then I felt like I'd be a super-villain if I passed this showcase. And, to be honest, the other showcase probably wouldn't have a car! But bidding first wasn't really the position I wanted to be in.
I did some research before the show about car prices, looking at cars that appeared in the back half of Season 51. The Accord was on my list and I remembered it being around $27,000 or so. Then $5,000 for the pool table, $2,000 for the bar table, and $1,000 for the pickle ball set...added up to $35,000. For some reason, that seemed like a lot! My brain was really focused on not going over if I was going to bid first.
So I went back through and calculated what the lowest possible price for each of the items could be: $27K for the car, $2K for the pool table, $1K for the bar table, and $1K for the pickle ball set. And then, for kicks, took $1K off of that to get $30K total. Then added $250 for DSW purposes. This whole thought process probably took less than twenty seconds, but it seemed like FOREVER when it felt liked everyone was waiting for you to bid.
The second showcase ended up being really nice also! When they revealed the SUV at the end, I turned to Drew and gave him a silly "astonished" face and he looked back at me and gave me a funny "well, what can you do?" shrug...probably the realest and funniest moment I remember. It was great. I thought Gina's bid was pretty close at the time. The SUV was probably around $25, trip to Denver around $8K, and the shoes around $1K: $34K total -- but I was hoping that she was over. She was very close to following someone in the audience who was telling her to bid $37,000.
During the stop down, they started moving things around on stage and I started to get bad vibes. They pushed the pickle ball set off stage, and closed the doors to the game room and the Accord. They moved the shoes closer to Door 3. I was pretty sure I had lost at this point.
But, during the break, Drew and I had a long chat about what I do for work and we talked a bit about Rich Fields also. It was really nice, but I wonder if he was just trying to soften the blow knowing I was about to lose!
The announced the ARP of my showcase first and I was way off. Knowing now that the car was likely closer to $30K, my initial math might have worked out. But Gina had an amazing bid...almost a DSW! She said to me afterward "thank God I didn't bid $37,000!", which, umm...I wish she had! But Gina and her fiancé were amazing people and I was so happy for them! And losing to such a great bid makes it a lot easier to not second-guess myself. As nervous as I was about going over, I was never going to get close enough to beat such a awesome bid.
(Also, I feel like the quality of my bid is exactly what you would expect from someone who made the playoffs with the 8th best points average in Season 35. You don't get any points if you go over!)
Afterward, you would think it would just be boring paperwork and leaving, but the studio was actually under lockdown! There was a suspect that had stolen a car and was involved in a shoot-out with police on the street just outside Haven Studios! We ended up having to stay inside the studio for an extra hour after the taping until we were given the all-clear to leave by the police, and even then, the police escorted out of a specific exit from the parking lot. I've joked later to people that they just wanted to make sure we got the full L.A. experience! Here's an article about the police chase:
https://ktla.com/news/local-news/suspect-charged-in-officer-involved-shooting-in-l-a/Since they reused some of the games and prizes from the tapings earlier in the day, our air date ended up being over three months after we taped the show. But, I think, somehow they got the dates confused...I ended up getting some of my prizes and my Plinko check in the mail last month, when I always thought you never got anything until after the airdate of your show. So I had to find somewhere to hide them in my apartment until Wednesday, when I could finally show them off!
Apologies for the long essay, but I figured if anyone wanted to hear all the behind-the-scenes details, it would be the people here! Let me know if you have any questions!
And it was fun to come back! Looking through my post history, I found this post that I made back in 2006 (
https://www.golden-road.net/index.php/topic,1696.msg29737.html#msg29737):
Plinko first was a nice touch. I still don't understand the massive Plinko-hatred in this forum. It keeps people watching and did you see [her] reaction? Everyone loves to hear that they are going play "$50,000 Plinko!".
Exactly!
