I'm back from 9 great days in the World w/ the family. One of the highlights was getting to the Hot Seat at WWTBAM at MGM. I also did as much pin trading as my incredibly patient, non-pin trading DW would tolerate. First, the game!
1. Getting to the Hot Seat is almost entirely luck. Forget the Fastest Fingers - some clueless yahoo who happens to guess right is usually the winner. Winning times are usually betwen 1.5 and 2.5 seconds. Compare that with TV. You just have to hope the first contestant gets high enough (around 8,000) to weed out the trivia-challenged without using up all the time.
2. It gets really easy to second-guess yourself in that seat. Answers that you shout out without hesitation at home suddenly give you reason to pause when 600 + strangers are staring at you!
3. I was much more conservative than I thought. I told myself I'd just keep guessing and see what happened, but when I had no clue at the 125,000 level, and my Phone A Complete Stranger didn't pan out, I walked away. Just as well, since the answer I was leaning toward would have been wrong. I ended up with a baseball cap, lanyard, polo shirt, and one pretty cool collection of 11 pins.
I also managed to snag a few decent pins during my stay. I picked up a Pop Century Resort pin (3500, only to CM's), a surfing Mickey (LE 1000), 15th and 18th Tokyo anniversary pins, a January 1st , 2001 Tokyo pin, and a bunch of other stuff I can't remember. All in all, a super trip!
1. Getting to the Hot Seat is almost entirely luck. Forget the Fastest Fingers - some clueless yahoo who happens to guess right is usually the winner. Winning times are usually betwen 1.5 and 2.5 seconds. Compare that with TV. You just have to hope the first contestant gets high enough (around 8,000) to weed out the trivia-challenged without using up all the time.
2. It gets really easy to second-guess yourself in that seat. Answers that you shout out without hesitation at home suddenly give you reason to pause when 600 + strangers are staring at you!
3. I was much more conservative than I thought. I told myself I'd just keep guessing and see what happened, but when I had no clue at the 125,000 level, and my Phone A Complete Stranger didn't pan out, I walked away. Just as well, since the answer I was leaning toward would have been wrong. I ended up with a baseball cap, lanyard, polo shirt, and one pretty cool collection of 11 pins.
I also managed to snag a few decent pins during my stay. I picked up a Pop Century Resort pin (3500, only to CM's), a surfing Mickey (LE 1000), 15th and 18th Tokyo anniversary pins, a January 1st , 2001 Tokyo pin, and a bunch of other stuff I can't remember. All in all, a super trip!
