Deal or No Deal craziness hit Sacramento! There were about 20,000 people at the Folsom Auto Mall on Saturday. Yes, I’m one of the crazy people who stood in line for 6 hours. I got there at 9:30am; they allowed people to line up beginning at 6am. The off ramps were completely backed up to get to the auto mall. People were parking as far away as a mile and walking in, but luckily I know someone who lives in the apartment complex right next door so I had the code to open the gate. I walked over to the dealership and got in line. The warning on the audition sign was “From this point there is a 12 hour wait.” People that were walking out were warning people of a 16 hour wait. I think it was to get rid of people because they weren’t expecting half of the people that were there. Every couple hours, while winding through the lines, there would be a person trying to offer slips of paper to get out of line. The slips of paper were to attach to a video you send in for a “guaranteed viewing” – yeah right!! Come to find out the videos end up in a storage unit the size of Costco!I waited in line and a couple hours passed and I thought, “Oh, what’s another hour (and another and another)?” Especially at the chance to have Doug work only 1 job and be able to buy a house and pay for my traffic ticket I got last week, OH and pay the taxes we owe the state. It was pretty boring at first because I went by myself. It was cold and rainy until about 12pm, so the ground was wet and I didn’t bring a chair to sit in, however I did bring some food and water. I wasn’t about to eat or drink anything and have to go to the bathroom – we didn’t see bathrooms (port-o-potties) until about 3 hours into it and there were 10 for 20,000 people – UH NO THANKS!!
After being in line for a few hours I got to know the people around me pretty well. There was a 15 year firefighter and his 5 month pregnant wife that had driven down from Reno (there are Reno auditions next Saturday, but he has work) and another woman next to me that drove in from Napa. It was a HUGE melting pot of people. People were dressed up like clowns, pirates, kings, dinosaurs, there was a guy with tattoos across his forehead, a woman that was very large in a motorized wheelchair that wore a dress the models would wear, etc – you name it and it was there!
My section of the line was getting really close to the end and the producer came out and told everyone they have 15 seconds for their audition. Being in line that long, you already learn the process. So the producer continued to brag about how much money he has and he knows that because we were all standing in line for HIS show. He told us that Deal or No Deal is syndicated, so it will air everyday along with the original version. He said, “Do you know what that means? That you have 2 chances to get on a Deal or No Deal show? No, now I’m twice as rich!!” It’s a good thing he’s a humble man – geez. He did tell us how the daily show will work: there will be 26 average people holding the numbered cases and Howie will spin a wheel and the person holding the number he lands on will take the case they are holding and play for $500k.
When we get into the audition area there are about 8 tables and 10 people at each table. You have 15 seconds to tell your story. They go through each person at your table and maybe keep one or two. I told my story that my husband works 2 jobs, lost everything due to mold, blah blah blah right? Do you think they want people who need the money? Nope. Of the people at my table 3 of us REALLY needed the money, but the firefighter and his 5 month pregnant wife went on to the next step of auditions and their story was, “5 months pregnant, have a 20 month old, 15 year firefighter, just want more money to take care of her (his wife).” In all honesty, they are a great couple and I’m sure they would do good things with the money. For example, while we were waiting in line there were people selling water for $2 (and a cookie for $1) and after he walked a mile to his car and a mile back (to get his sunglasses and something for his wife) while his wife waited with us, he bought all the waters a little boy (half a case) had and handed them out to anyone who needed one. Yeah, it wasn’t a lot of money or bottles of water, but they are good people who do little things like that. The couple also went to the “roach coach” and stood in line for 45+ minutes to get food for anyone around them that wanted anything. Apparently when they got to the front of the line they were out of everything, so he bought whatever he could to give to those who made requests to make up for the fact that there was nothing. I’ve got the wife’s business card and I emailed her to see how the auditions went after the first round.
All in all it was quite an experience and I have a fun story. I met some great people and some really weird people too. Would I do it again? Probably not. But you know....there are auditions in Reno on the 5th!! I'll just tell them I'm a pregnant paramedic (I couldn't pass for a firefighter - I'm too weak! HAHA). Then I'll add the mold story after that :-)
This is the line when I first got there. You can see we are between 2 lines of yellow caution tape.
This is the line behind us beginning to wrap back around as more people get there. At the bottom right of the photo is a woman dressed as a clown; she took the paper to get out of line a send in a video. I don't think she knew it was going end up in a huge storage unit. 
This is when we finally made it back around and back at the dealership. Little did we know there would be about 2 hours of lines behind the dealership too.
The front of the dealership. People still getting there and heading to the end of the line.
This is an accident we saw. The man standing in line with us watched the SUV try to pass to the right...OOPS! The guy in the SUV must have thought the car in front of him was too slow, so he cut around to the right lane which was at a dead stop, since the off ramps were jammed up, so he slammed into the white pickup. We heard the brakes for a while before the impact and ended up having to smell them for a while too. 
This is a map I colored to show the craziness. The green lines wrapped 3 times along the road, then the pink lines headed to the back of the dealership, and finally the purple lines snaked in front of the dealership. I started in the second of the 3 lines on the street (there's a small red dot) and finished at the blue dot. When we were winding through the purple lines in front there were now additional lines across from us - the yellow. I think people ended up going from the green to the yellow and then the purple. It was so unorganized.
Then in the afternoon we had an egg decorating contest. I haven't decorated an egg in so long!
