Mustang Daily Staff Report
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Brett Wagner wasn’t full of energy when he first walked into the studio on Tuesday. After hours of driving and waiting, the materials engineering sophomore was just ready to get it over with.
That all changed when he saw his name held up on a cue card, calling him down to “Contestant’s Row” for the May 7 filming of the CBS show, “The Price is Right.”
“I shot up instantly and couldn’t have been more excited,” Wagner said. “My brothers jumped up around me and dog piled on top of me. I was literally like a little school girl.”
Nine hours before his name was called, Wagner and 21 of his Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity brothers piled into their cars and caravanned from San Luis Obispo to Los Angeles for the show.
“(A fraternity brother) stood up at our chapter meeting and said, ‘Hey, I’ve got this crazy idea. I think we should go on ‘The Price is Right,”” Wagner said. “In the back of my mind, I knew I would be the first one to sign up.”
There are two ways to get on the show, Wagner said. Prospective contestants can make a reservation in advance or they can show up early and wait in line. The Lambda Chi Alpha brothers decided to find a date that worked for everyone and signed up online.
After a four-and-a-half-hour drive and about an hour of waiting in line, the group members got their name tags and numbers, and then waited for group interviews to start.
“I noticed that the people who were more engaging with quicker responses were talked to longer,” Wagner said. “I put two and two together. If you were boring and didn’t have a good response, then screw you and onto the next person.”
The producer asked Wagner a few basic questions like everyone else, then continued talking to him for longer than any of the other contestants in his group, he said.
After Wagner’s interview, his group went into the retro-studio, which looks just like it does on television, he said.
“Twenty-two seats were reserved right in the middle of the studio just for us,” he said. “We were so excited.”
The game show employees held up cue cards to announce the first five contestants and the fourth said “Brett Wagner.”
“I was so lost in the moment that I don’t even remember what the first product was or what I bid on it,” Wagner said. “I was so far off and looked like an idiot.”
In the end, Wagner won a $300 “pity prize for people who were called to the front but didn’t make it on stage,” he said.
Though he didn’t make it on stage to compete, Wagner was still pleased with the experience.
“I got to sit up in the front row for the whole entire episode,” he said. “Drew Carey came up and talked to me during the commercials. He kept asking me what was going on and making jokes with me.”
Amber Diller contributed to this staff report.