Winning a Game of Family Feud

Personal

August 11, 2023

Waldis Family – Family Feud Experience

I know I already gave away the ending in the title, but do you really want to read about the time my family went on a game show and then lost?

But maybe you’re wondering HOW we got on the show and if Steve Harvey is as cool as he seems on TV… Yeah, everyone asks the same questions, let’s get you some answers!

My mom was not a fan of Family Feud…

I actually find this part of the story a bit ironic…

Backstory: If your parents are anything like mine, they’ve almost always got the living room TV turned on in the background. In the mornings, it’s the news, on the weekends, it’s typically HGTV, but for a while in our household my dad religiously put Family Feud on every single night after dinner. This was during my time in college, so I wasn’t always around for these evening binges, but that didn’t keep me from hearing about how much my mom HATED it. She didn’t have anything against the game show network, but she’d much rather finish the day with an episode of CSI: Miami or Downton Abbey.

(Here’s the ironic part) my mom ended up being the one who made this whole thing happen…

…then SHE applied for our family to be on the show!

Frankly, I didn’t even know that she had seen an online ad for Atlanta-based families (which is where I’m from and where my parents still live) and applied to be on the show until she forwarded our family the details regarding an upcoming Zoom interview with one of the crew directors.

Apparently, the filming location had been moved to Atlanta and they were looking for local families to come on the show.

Interview Process

In July 2020 for our first interview, we all wore our Georgia Bulldog jerseys (to look cohesive and spirited of course), went around to introduce ourselves like we would on the show, and played a pretend round of Family Feud! Pretty sure I botched the game and couldn’t come up with an answer when my turn came around, but that’s not important …

…because we got a call back! Is that what they call it in Showbiz?

After the initial zoom interview, we waited a week to be told we’d advanced to the next round and hopped on a 5-way call with someone who seemed important. At this point, we were told that our next ‘interview’ was a dress rehearsal on stage at Tyler Perry studios in Atlanta!

Wardrobe!

The next order of business was to pick out our outfits! We also had to work out some travel logistics and such since my brother Zach and I both live in Texas, but online shopping for dresses was much more fun than picking out flights. Our family was instructed to pick a “theme” or color scheme and find outfits that made us look like a team – and we each had to have a backup in case (for whatever reason) our plan didn’t match the vision of the directors.

We chose to dress in red, white, and blue as we are a military family (Zach is a pilot in the US Air Force) and wanted to show off our patriotism. We even got matching American Flag masks!

Prepping for the Big Screen

Following our month-long shopping spree, all that was left was a quick COVID swab and showing up to film!

Our rehearsal/film dates were over Labor Day Weekend in 2020, so we all met back at home in Peachtree Corners and started practicing our introductions the night before our big day.

A lot of people ask me if we ‘studied’ or ‘practiced’ beforehand – the answer is YES. We all watched a ton of episodes and practiced playing the game on our own leading up to the filming. There’s an app you can get to play with your friends and family!

Filming Days!!!

I started having flashbacks to the good ole days of early morning dance competitions and sorority recruitment when my alarm went off right before 4:00am to start my hair and makeup for the day.

As I filled the basement laundry-room-turned-hair-and-makeup-studio with the smell of cheap hairspray, I thought it’d be a good idea to try to follow an eye makeup tutorial for the first time!… I’m not even going to get into how horrible this turned out, but instead will move on to 3 hours later when we arrived at the set.

AHH!!! What an insanely cool experience to finally be entering the gates of Tyler Perry Studios! Growing up in Atlanta, we’d heard of countless shows being filmed here, but I never thought I’d actually be on one of them!

Day 1 on Set

On the first day at the studio, we had to learn all the “Do’s and Don’ts” of being on the set and filming Family Feud. There were a few other families in the same makeshift classroom that we got to know along the way.

One thing that was different about the set of Family Feud during the pandemic was that instead of having a live audience that bought tickets to the show, the families invited to compete on the show made up the studio audience. This may have actually been our favorite part of the whole weekend because we got to watch other episodes get filmed and have a very close-up, candid experience with Steve Harvey.

The reality of these episodes is that they take over an hour to film, but they end up only streaming for 22 minutes, so there’s a lot of time for goofing off and cutting out the ‘non-family-television-appropriate’ moments, which there were plenty of!

During the entire first day on set, we only got up on stage once to do a dress rehearsal and show off our outfits, but didn’t get chosen to film that day.

This little hand thing we do is a “W” for Waldis… yes, we’re THAT family.

Day 2 on Set

On the second day, we headed back down to the studio same as the first, but got to skip the TV-prep-class and go straight to the audience. We were basically regulars at this point.

We only sat through a couple of games before we were called back to hair and makeup for a few last minute touches and some time to prepare our COVID-friendly handshakes with our opponents, the Montás family (notice we don’t shake hands at the buzzer, but instead we each came up with a socially distanced dance move to show off on our way to play).

STAGE TIME

IT’S TIME!!!! We were led on stage and had a last-minute-reminders chat with a director and then a quick family pep talk!

Game Play

Now it’s time to play!

First, Steve Harvey welcomes everyone to the game show and asks the “family leader” (which was my mom) to introduce the family! Later, we’ll go down the line and each introduce ourselves by sharing our name, occupation, and maybe a fun fact.

Each round of the game starts with one person from each family at the buzzer in the opening face off.

Whichever person hits the buzzer and gets the first right answer has the opportunity to play on that round or give it to the other family. We always took the opportunity to play if we could!

Then we each get a chance to guess the answers to survey questions and win points based on how many other people (in the original survey) answered similarly. The first team to 300 points wins the first part of the game gets to play FAST MONEY!

We went through a few rounds and absolutely DOMINATED the board, getting to 300 points with no problem at all! You know what that means…

$$$ FAST MONEY $$$

The fast money part of Family Feud is played with 2 people from the winning family. We chose Zach and my dad to play fast money before we even got on stage, knowing they would kill it if we could get enough points to play!

Each person gets 20 seconds to answer as many (up to 5) survey questions as they can. Then the other player comes out and has the same questions. Each survey question was asked to 100 people, and points are assigned based on how many people answered the same way that you do!

If you don’t get 200 points in the fast money round, you win $5 for every point, buttttt if you do get to 200 points, you win TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS!!