Whether it’s playing Scrabble at the cottage or watching game shows on TV Amanda Dinsdale and her family have always enjoyed playing games together.
Being selected to be part of the Canadian version of the iconic TV game show Family Feud — and winning — has only grown that love of all things game related.
Dinsdale, along with her husband Christopher and their three daughters — Stephanie, Sarah and Johanna — appeared this week on three episodes of the CBC show with host Gerry Dee, and said getting to take that love of games to the small screen was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
“We had so much fun with it,” she said, adding back in September 2019, her family decided they wanted to do something fun for her birthday, creating a script and gathering props to make what ultimately ended up being their audition tape for the show.
After undergoing several Zoom interviews and an online mock game with another family, they were officially selected and filmed their three episodes in October 2020.
Walking on to the set for the first time was definitely a little bit overwhelming, she said.
“The lights were so bright and there were cameras everywhere. I just remember it as all being very shiny. But the funny thing is, in the first game, it just goes by so quickly, you really are a deer in headlights. I actually buzzed out a few times because I was laughing so hard at what my kids were saying so I hadn’t really thought about the answer for when they got to me,” she told BarrieToday.
“My kids were hilarious! One of the survey (questions) was ‘What do you use to practice your kissing skills?’. Johanna was up at the buzzer and she said ‘a melon’. It was actually on the board as a fruit," the mom added. "Then she asked Gerry Dee if he’d ever kissed a melon before!
"One of my other daughters was up there and he said to name something juicy… she said ‘butts’ … like a juicy butt.”
The Dinsdale family managed to beat out the other family three times to make it to the Fast Money part of the show, where two members of the winning family are under the clock to try to win $10,000. While they didn’t win the Fast Money during their first episode, Dinsdale is thrilled to announce that they won during the second and third episodes, walking away with $20,725 in total.
“We were all in disbelief and couldn’t stop jumping around in celebration," she said.
While the first episode went by in a blur, Dinsdale said the family felt more relaxed by the time they filmed their next two episodes.
“We just had a blast and it was fun from there on. We won (the first) $10,000, we got through and the rest of it was just icing on the cake,” she said.
Even better than the money, she added, was the show was the first opportunity since the spring for the family to be together.
“I had not seen my girls for nine months due to the pandemic. They had a clinic where we had the COVID test done… once they came back negative we got to see our girls and no money can match how we felt being together. That meant the world to us. It was very emotional and it was definitely the highlight of our year.”
All three of the family's episodes are available online on CBC Gem.
