“Wheel of Fortune” Kicks Off 29th Season Tonight
Long running syndicated game show Wheel of Fortune opens its 29th season tonight. Check your local listings. Both Pat Sajak and Vanna White return trying to give away a million dollars to lucky puzzle solvers. Nearly everything you saw last season returns. One new feature is the “1/2 Car Tag”. If you can collect both of them by landing on them and calling a correct letter, regardless if you win the entire game, you get a car. The tags will appear during the first three rounds. A special partnership and sweepstakes with Sears, called the “Secret Santa Sweepstakes”, will appear later this year and gives viewers a chance to win up to a million dollars nightly. The show will also introduce new categories “Television Quote” and “Movie Quote” as well as visit Portland, Oregon, in March (it will air in May). If you watch the show tonight be sure to let us know what you think.
don’t forget it will be Jim Thornton’s first season as full time announcer. Also, the 1/2 car I think they stole it from Whammy!
THey had the 1/2 car gimmick for one week last season. The first version of High ROllers, on which people uncovered prizes when they took numbers off the board, had 1/2 a car hidden behind two numbers. The contestant had to take both numbers off the board and win that game of the match to win the car. A contestant had to hit two bumpers on the Magnificent Marble Machine to win car. WOF producer Harry Friedman worked as a writer for Heatter-Quigley at the time.
Pat didn’t mention the 1/2 car gimmick at the top of the show, and I didn’t catch it on the wheel in round one. It either won’t appear on every show or every week or hasn’t made its permanent debut yet.
Maybe it’ll be a mid-season thing like the Topkcaj wedge?
I remember the 1/2 car wedges from last season, but (as was mentioned) I didn’t see them tonight either. But, thanks for letting us know about the upcoming events. Until I heard that the 1/2 car wedges will be permanant (or, at least, that’s what it looks like in the story), I was kind of disappointed with the premiere. Other than the opening sequence…which looked great…I didn’t see anything new…maybe the prize puzzle visual. But, even the category visual (at the bottom) looks the same. Don’t they always change that too?
There were no 1/2 car wedges today, however there were two minor changes to the wheel. First, the wild card is now on the pink $900 space adjacent to a bankrupt. The other is that the $700 space where the wild card used to be is now $500. Given the expectation of the [$500 | 1/2 car | $500] wedges that appeared last season, I’m predicting that the new $500 space is where one of those one of those car wedges will be. My guess for the other location is the blue $500 adjacent to the red $900.
Disclaimer: this prediction is just an exhibition, so please: No wagering. :-)
Good start for this season. But there only one problem, where the 1/2 car wedges?! Wild Card has moved to a new home, $700 has replace by $500 but no 1/2 car.
The Jackpot space debuted on the third week of Season 14(nighttime) on 9/16/1996, 10 years to the week(9/15/86) after the NBC daytime version introduced the cash Jackpot in round three and eight years to the day after (9/16/88) they discontinued it.
I read online that the 1/2 car tags will debut next week during “Road Trip” week. Appropriate time for this introduction, don’t you think?
Whoops! Just saw that was for last season! Oh, well, I guess it’s still a mystery.
I read that they’re going to Portland, OR for one of their road trips. Where are the others?
Putting a 1/2 card wedge on the wheel is stupid. I say do away with the prizes, and the only prize on the wheel is the car itself.
It used to be the prize for the Mystery Wedge WAS the car. Now it’s $10,000 in cash.
I was really disappointed by the season opener. The new graphics were nice but there wasn’t anything that stood out other than Vanna’s dress. That was not season premiere worthy, it was freaking disgrossting :P It just felt like another episode to me. I’m just hoping they start stripping the wheel of some of it’s content because it is way too crowded, especially once they add the 1/2 car wedges. Just think of the cluttered mess it will be during the Mystery Round.
Hey,
Just curious – does anyone know what month they have auditions for WOF in!?
Cheers
Have they ever been back in california?
The $50,000 prize puzzle bonus is gone. Does anybody know if it will ever come back? I just got my Sony card. That was the only reason I got one. Not that I actually expected to win, but I thought it would make the prize puzzle segment more exciting to watch each night!