After 15 hours on studio grounds, I feel I am qualified as an expert. However, if Mr. Whitman or Rosalind see this post, I will defer to them. They are regular audience members at The Price is Right.
I will begin with how we actually got in to the studio...
It started as any other day for the staff of The Price is Right. Mateo was at the front gate in his red jacket handing out Order of Arrival numbers to all the potential contestants who had been lining up since 6am. Mom and I didn't arrive until 6:30 so we didn't wait long before getting our Order of Arrival number and being escorted to our spot on one of the long metal benches. We were instructed to stay in our places in numerical order until we were processed. It wasn't long before they announced that, because they were taping Million Dollar Spectacular shows, the taping times would be a little different than usual. The first show was to start and hour early (at noon) and the second show would start an hour late (at 5pm). This was great news because, since we were numbers 224 and 225 out of 330, we thought we were in the first taping for sure. We had to get up and re-arrange ourselves a few times when the pre-booked groups started arriving. Large groups had priority over the rest of us and were guaranteed admittance simply because they were with a group, which means, they only needed to be there by 9am.
After a few rounds of musical benches, additioanl red jackets came around to give us name tags. Mateo was off to the side managing the crowd and answering questions from those of us who were starting to get a little confused with the whole process. With nametags in hand, we waited for our Priority Number. This is the number we would be idenfied by until we were inside the studio. By the time, they got to our bench, they were no longer handing out numbers. That's when we learned that we did not get in for the first taping and we were placed on stand-by as numbers 63 and 64. I'm not a math major, but by my calculation that means they had about 170 group members who arrived after we did.
Now, this is where it gets a little weird...
There were 5 or 6 red jackets floating around. They were very pleasant people and patiently answered our questions. Everything was happy until we started comparing answers. It turns out that nobody - no even Mateo - could tell us exactly what would happen next. Would our stand-by numbers get us in to the next show ahead of those people with tickets only for the second show? According to one red jacket (Sheira - she was so sweet!), our stand-by numbers would become our priority numbers for the second show. Translation: We were in! and we had priority over those arriving only for the second show. With this information, I felt secure and took my place on the bench. My mother, who didn't seem to pay attention to the announcement, was standing with a group of recent arrivals for the second show. I tried to get her attention, but she was busy in her own world talking to Mateo. That's when Mateo marked our tickets for the second show with priority numbers. When she returned, I told her that she didn't need to do that because our stand-by's from the first show will get us in. We were told to leave the grounds and come back at 1pm.
This time, we followed the rules and left the grounds. We returned at 12:45pm. The first warning sign was the line up waiting to get in to the grounds. Next, we heard the crowd inside the grounds. Why were they there when everyone was asked to leave? We made our way in by showing our stand-by numbers. We went to take our place with our stand-by/priority numbers and were told that those numbers would only be stand-by for the second taping and there was no guarantee we would get in. You can imagine some tempers started to flare and mass confusion was in the works, when my mother told me to put the stand-by numbers away. She then produced the tickets that Mateo had marked earlier, and we were escorted to the other set of metal benches where we would get our real priority numbers and eventual entry to the second taping!
End of story? No...
Remember the second taping was supposed to start at 5pm? After clearing security and sitting in yet another corral of metal benches, we waited...and waited...and waited. At 7:00, a crowd of 330 hungry and tired people entered The Price is Right studio. Have you ever seen a crowd come back to life? It was the most exciting experience! Just being in the studio was cool! Being 3 rows from the front - even more cool! Seeing somebody win a million dollars - Priceless! (well, nothing is priceless in that studio).
The analysis...
How do they decide who gets picked to Come on Down? Apparently, the red jackets are watching you all day. They are looking at your number and trying to decide if you would make a good contestant. There is a very short interview process - less than 30 seconds per person - when a producer makes his judgement about who should be called. But, my theory is that they place people in the crowd posing as audience members to interact with everyone. These people then get to see who is easy to get along with, who really deserves to be picked etc. Maybe that is why Mr. Whitman and Rosalind attend the shows so regularly.
