It ticks all the boxes as far a great date night goes for us – something new we’ve never done before, cheap and above all, fun, giving you something to talk about while on your date. (Because let’s face it, some weeks, if you and your partner have seen an awful lot of each other, you can run out of things to say unless you’re keeping it fresh.)

So I promptly registered for everything that films in our hometown of Melbourne. Given we’re not a huge city, we were limited to a select few shows – mostly entertainment and game shows.

Then we received a call from Deal or No Deal.

You need to be patient about this date as the process of application and auditioning can take a few months. Best to register now and then wait it out to see what happens. I kept it a surprise from Den until I got confirmation for the audition day just to make it a bit more exciting.

Audition day came and went without much fanfare… in fact, it was a bit of an anti-climax on audition day. Line up, have your photo taken, fill in another application sheet and then sit down to meet with the producers who have a chat with you to get to know you, and process your application. We left not sure what to expect next. They told us the wait could be up to 6 months before we got to a filming.

If you do get into the filming, there is no guarantee that you’ll make it onto television. With 150 people in the audience, there’s a five-in-seven chance you’ll get to hold a case and have a punt at $500 for guessing the case right. There’s a 1-in-35 chance that you’ll be THE person picking the cases off for the chance at $200,000.

They film quite a few shows in a row, so it’s a long day. They provided a yummy lunch and lots of laughs by way of the crowd-warmers that throw jokes around behind the scenes all day. Not every filming will take so much time and energy, but the key is to keep your spirits up as they are always looking for animated people to jump onstage. Which means you have to be over-the-top cheesy most of the day if you want them to notice you.

Guess what? They picked me. Most profitable date night ever! Unfortunately, as you’ll see here, I didn’t get anywhere near the $200,000 I could have had. But you know what? I had a ball doing it! It pushed our comfort circles way out (particularly the night it was going to air when I was nervous as all-hell.)

To check out the events as they unfolded behind the scenes and on national television, see below.

The last video only had room for about 30 seconds in it – to spare you the watching (and me the uploading!) I’ll just tell you – I had the $4,000! So after all that bad luck there was a little tiny light at the end of the tunnel. But despite kicking myself for days afterwards about choosing the wrong case (Why didn’t I pick Den’s birthday, or my father’s birthday? We could have had $15,000! Or $20,000!), in the end it was a great date night.

I recommend it – it’s a barrel of laughs!

And if you’re good at something, like general knowledge, why not try your hand out at an actual game of skill? Or if you have a favourite television show that you watch all the time, attend that together for a great insight into how it’s made. Television is a fascinating process if you’ve never seen it before.

Date Night Rating Overview
Romance Factor: 0/10
Cheese Factor: 10/10
Fun Factor: 10/10 (assuming you get on as a contestant… otherwise I’d give it a 7/10 fun factor)

As much as Emma is going to hate me saying this, I’m going to say it anyways… Emma has some expectations about the dates that I take her on… and… at times, she’s HATED the date idea before it’s even started.

So if I think the date idea is going to be crappy, well… I get nervous…

These days I tend not to give the date idea away – a surprise is always best. Actually, I usually dull it down so her expectations are so low that no matter what we do there is a chance that she’ll like it.

Plane spotting is one of those dates that could go all too terribly wrong! We drove out of the city, on the freeway and through toll-ways! I NEVER go through tolls – but I was chasing the sun so time was not on my side. As soon as we hit the freeway out of the city, Em’s was like “we’re going to the airport aren’t’ we?”

I was like (jokingly) “Dammit, stupid shit, $#%^en how does she know these things! …yes dear plane spotting it is. How’s that sit with you?”

Em’s – “I’m cool with that… are we going to make out?”

( LAUGHTER )

We had a great time! Check the vid out to see what we saw… Enjoy.

Well… not all of them are Top 10s as such, but you get what I mean. A quick glance at our most looked-at posts from 2009 shows that you guys love these lists as much as we do!

Just to make your life easier, here they all are for you to check out, in order of (of course) popularity… enjoy!

1. 10 Saucy Date Ideas You Can Do Naked!
2. 10 Fun Date Ideas for a Lazy Sunday
3. 7 of the Most Romantic Date Ideas Ever
4. 7 Completely Free Date Ideas
5. 10 Great At-Home Date Ideas (for Parents!)
6. 6 Other Ways You Can Hang Out With Your Sweetie
7. 5 Creative Ways to Do the Movies
8. The Bookstore Date Idea & 5 Other Conversation Starter Dates
9. 5 Ways to Do Something New with Your Sweetie
10. 5 Worthy Date Ideas That Give Something Back
11. 6 Completely Cheesy Date Ideas
12. 20 Festive Christmas Date Ideas

If anyone has a top 10 list they’d like to see written, comment below and we’ll get onto developing it straight away!

Happy Dating, Lovers!

Happy Dating!

Full List of Date Ideas We’ve Done:

1. Ten Pin Bowling
2. Going to the Movies
3. Playing Pool in a Seedy Pub
4. Going shopping for Den
5. Roulette at The Casino
6. Getting Arty at Home and Sketching Each Other
7. Italian Night at Home
8. Getting Lost in a Hedge Maze
9. Baking Cookies
10. The Driving Range
11. The Comedy Club
12. Maha Middle Eastern Bar & Grill
13. Kikki-K Love Conversation Starters (and a picnic)
14. The Bookstore Date
15. Visit the Farmers’ Market
16. Fish & Chip Picnic
17. Ice Skating
18. Vegetarian Restaurant
19. Stargazing
20. Mineral Hot Springs
21. Jewish Holocaust Museum & The Immigration Museum
22. Fondue Date Night (aka Death by Cheese)
23. The Providore in Beechworth
24. Yum Cha
25. Cirque du Soleil (Tickets were a gift = less than $30!)
26. The RSL
27. Lunch at a Winery
28. Deck 88 at Eureka Tower
29. Bingo!
30. Video Game Arcade
31. Vietnamese Pho
32. Joint Manicures
33. Swimming at the Local Pool
34. Borrow a Kid
35. The Nudist Beach
36. Plane Spotting

1. Go get your tree!
2. Make Eggnog
3. Decorate the tree together over Eggnog
4. Bake Christmas cookies
5. Do the shopping together, wandering through the mall with your hands in each others’ back pockets.
6. Make snowmen & snow angels before heading inside to warm up by the open fire and roast marshmallows
7. Go ice-skating
8. Go tobogganing!
9. Wrap the presents and write the cards while singing cheesy carols
10. Order a Mrs. Santa/Elf outfit online (and use it!)
11. Drive or walk around your local neighborhood enjoying the Christmas lights
12. Have a picnic at Carols by Candlelight
13. Go visit Santa and have a picture taken with both of you on his lap, then tell him what you
want for Christmas (bonus points if you can make him laugh – or at least blush!)
14. Take in a performance of the Nutcracker at the ballet
15. Take it in turns to read ‘A Christmas Carol’ to each other (or at least go see the movie!)
16. Have a Christmas-themed movie marathon at home. Love Actually, It’s a Wonderful Life, Miracle
on 34th Street, The Holiday, The Family Stone, The Santa Clause… it just goes on.
17. Volunteer at a Soup Kitchen or a Toy Drive together
18. Have a snowball fight!
19. Take a horse-drawn carriage ride with a bottle of wine
20. Make dreidls!

Got any more for us? Love to hear them…

We started with the most benign of the four worst dates: getting joint manicures. Not a bad one, especially from a female perspective. I don’t mind a good manicure. Feedback from girlfriends was along the same lines: what a great date idea! Which makes me suspect it’s the men that have been voting it down… and Den wasn’t too impressed with the idea.

Nonetheless, we forged on. Being that we are all about the $30 Date Night, we had to find a manicure place that would do them for $15 a pop. In Australia, this is a little hard to come by. I understand that in the states, manis and pedis come a lot cheaper.

We ended up at the local beauty college. Our first mistake. You know what would have made it better? If we’d spent more than $30 and went to a proper day spa.

For a start, the manicures were hardly “joint”. We arrived at the beauty college, and were told to sit on a dilapidated couch to wait.

I was taken first to one side of the room for my manicure while Den was left sitting bereft on his own. No conversation to be had across the room.

Den’s therapist was running late due to a waxing crisis with her previous client (I shudder to even think!) so I was nearly done by the time he got started.

My therapist (Nail technician? Person?) was okay until we got to the color bit. I was going to go for my signature pale pink (plus, people, pale colors look better if you’re unsure of the quality of the craftsmanship!) but Den urged me to go for something a little more drastic. “Orange!” he insisted. So I relented and went for a reddy-orange shade.

Bad idea, Den. It was gooped on thickly, bleeding into my cuticles and onto my hand. She went back over every finger with an orange stick and some nail polish remover to take the bleed from my skin. I have known this to happen once or twice before in my manicure history – but not on every finger!

Meanwhile, this entire time Den was on the other side of the room looking seriously underwhelmed at his beauty treatment. And by the end of it, his cuticles looked just as bad as when he went in.

But you know what? It could have been a really good date, I think. Just not a good $30 Date one. If we’d spent $50 on the date, we could’ve gone to a great little boutique salon like French Pink, where we would have been sat next to each other, could’ve laughed with the therapists and our nails would have looked much better.

Nonetheless, I do quite fancy my bright nails. They made me feel very va-va-voom all weekend!

And ladies, if you do decide to organize this date for yourself and your beau? I hear from my reliable sources over at Twitter that men appreciate a pedi much more than they do a mani. Just a little hint there.

Next week? Swimming at the Local Pool, me thinks. Which I’m kinda excited about! What gives with it being on the crap date list?

If you have any of your own date ideas (crap or otherwise) that you’d like to share, we’d love to hear about them.

Now, I’m not too upset about this date. Love a good mani. Den, on the other hand (no pun intended!) isn’t too thrilled by the idea. If it was a date with a girlfriend, we’d have ball.

Stay tuned tomorrow for the round-up of the date and Den’s view/my view.

I’m still willing to bet we can have fun doing this!

In the meantime, if you’re after some good date ideas, you know where to find them.

Happy dating, lovers!

Which brings me to the point of this post. The stupid date ideas.

Now, we are not responsible for all the date ideas posted on the site. Many of our users contribute these and you may or may not know that there is a rating system for our users to vote whether they love or hate the date. We publish our Top 5 and our Worst 5 on a dynamic basis.

Denis and I are going to lead you by example, dear readers. We figure if we can do our own four week date challenge using the Worst Dates and still have a good time, that has to be incentive enough for you guys to pick some of the more decent date ideas and go have your own month of dating together!

As it stands right now on the front of the site, the Worst 5 overall are:
1. Borrow a Kid
2. Swimming at the Local Y
3. Joint Manicures
4. Cut Each Other’s Hair
5. Nudist Beach

Thank God it’s a four week challenge. This means we get to drop one of those off the list. There’s no way in hell I’m letting Den near my hair, so…. yup. There’s going to be a Nudist Beach run at some point!

We begin next week, dear readers. We will of course, be documenting our adventures here on the blog for your viewing pleasure. Wish us luck.

If you’d like to follow us closely, I recommend you subscribe to our RSS.

And if anyone has any other dismal date ideas, feel free to suggest them here. There’s still time to swap them in above! What’s the worst date you ever went on?

So I couldn’t think of a date night more perfect than taking him to a video game arcade and cashing our thirty bucks into coins to spend the evening running around like little kids…

He seemed taken aback that I was a willing participant in the whole thing, and I can’t blame him. The amount of time I spend trying to get his attention while he blithely kills zombies (he has this bizarre game called Dead Head Fred, and as far as I can gather, the aim of it is to collect as many different heads as he can and swap them around as he runs through a graveyard…) and crashes cars (he drives them too, I’m pretty sure. OR races them. OR something.) is ridiculous. I openly hate the damn Playstation and would gladly throw it off our 19th-floor balcony if I didn’t fear the Wrath of Den so much… If I did chuck it overboard, I have a feeling I’d be heading face-first after it! I once accidentally knocked it off the arm of the couch as I walked past and it lost two weeks of data from the memory-card-thingy… he could barely look me in the eye for three days, he was that disappointed with me!!

The thing is, while pressing buttons on a machine is not really my thing, put a plastic gun in my hands and I’m Lara Croft all of a sudden!

Yeah, I whupped ass. Virtual reality is my thing, I guess… to the point where I was even ducking from imaginary zombies during Time Crisis (I know, what a dork), in which I TOTALLY WON AFTER DEN WAS KNOCKED OUT ON LEVEL 3! GO ME!

We moved through to Daytona (I sucked at it; which was to be expected, I’m not the best driver in the world) the motorbike ones (marginally better) and Point Blank (an old favourite!). We had a blast, had lots of laughs and topped the night off with a strip of old-school photos from the photo booth as a memento. Aww.

Great date night if you’re feeling like having a bit of silly fun! Highly recommend it.

Rate the Date

Romance Factor: 1/5
Cheese Factor: 4/5
Fun Factor: 4/5

Overall: A great date idea for burning off some energy, giggling like children and killing a few hours. Highly recommended!

I was going through the $30 Date Night site looking for a date idea that would blow me away… nothing popped out at me a grabbed me. Madly pressing the red button I cruised past the Bingo suggestion. It’s such a stupid date suggestion I didn’t even notice it… but, like the subliminal promos played at the movies back in the day, my mind couldn’t focus on much after Bingo.

It’s difficult to get excited about something that you think is going to be shit! I pictured a rundown shack lit by florescent lighting, the aroma of a deep fryer that hasn’t been filtered in 4 weeks, a sea of coin slot machines and massed by the elderly and, uh… bogans!

OMG, what have I got us into?

NOT OUR CROWD

We drove to the outskirts of Melbourne… Fawkner (way out north!) It’s where no city folk are game to travel. When we got there the Bingo car park was FULL! Seriously jam packed! The venue was massive!!! Much larger than what I expected, and yep there were a few slot machines but the place was clean and well presented.

I had called the center before hand for instructions on how the night works. I figured I’d rather look like a dick to one person than not have a clue in front of a crowd. When we got to the counter, the lady knew immediately who I was… embarrassing? yep!! “Are you the guy that called earlier?” How did she know…? She was lovely, explained how everything worked – but it didn’t sink in. We bought $32 worth of books, which got us 8 books (well it is $30 date night).

We walked into the hall – it was HUGE! And packed with a diverse range of people – yep… not the typical crowd that we’re used to.

At this point, Emma and I were feeling so far out of our comfort circle that we couldn’t even find ourselves a seat. Luckily, people in general are nice, and the organisers were helpful enough to find us a seat together.

BASIC INSTRUCTIONS

1 book has several games in it coded by color. Each game lasts approximately 60 seconds. Each Bingo session will go through an entire book, which is something like 7 or 8 games (not sure wasn’t counting). The more books you play with the better chance you have at winning. Like lottery tickets, play with 1 line of numbers or 32 lines… etc. Just means the more numbers you have to belt through to mark off.

Emma and I played with 2 books at a time – the lady at the counter advised against it because she says “they read out the numbers fast!” Well… yep they do! It’s insanely fast… yet looking around the room some people were marking off 8 books at a time!

IT’S FAST! HOLD ONTO YOUR PANTIES…

If the caller was serving tennis balls as fast as she was calling out the numbers, Roger Federer wouldn’t stand a chance. It seriously fast, which made it a lot of fun. Emma and I didn’t mean to fill ourselves with sugar before Bingo started, but it proved to our advantage… with sugar loaded our minds were at our peak to absorb the fast paced numbers and mark them off!

After 30 minutes our sugar levels dropped – things turned bad for our heroes.

The concentration levels started to fail. 36 – 21 – 7 – 9 – what’s on for tomorrow? – 76? – Shit what was the last number? – Damn it missed that number – MAYDAY… MAYDAY… bingo player down!

DON’T MESS WITH A BINGO PLAYER

The atmosphere was something else… there’s a massive hall, with a serious amount of people in it. It was packed out, and why wouldn’t it be, the grand prize for the night was $10,000. Unlike the lottery, we were going to keep playing till that $10,000 prize was won!

For a room of approx 500 people I was expecting more chatter, but Bingo players are not ones to socialize – they’re an interesting breed. The room has a slight tone of chatter muttering throughout while the caller is prepping to start the game… without a change in pitch, speed or momentum the caller says “first number” and the mob turns ghostly quiet… heads down and sharpies madly marking paper.

A mobile phone goes off close by to us… it has been set to vibrate yet it was enough to drive the mob wild! The caller had to stop just in case it was someone who muttered bingo but they knew better. The room was unsettled with people yelling out over the top of hundreds of disappointed sighs, until the caller said “next number” and then *BOOM* in an instant people were over their disappointment and they were back into it.

SHUT UP!

We had met the most lovely lady on our table… dubbed our BINGO ANGEL (only because we forgot to ask her name, but we did get her picture.) She gave me and Emma a real sharpie to borrow… each! Allowing us to discard our measly pens which don’t stack up in the Bingo world.

Our table sat out of one of the games, waiting patiently and quietly for the game to finish… I had to hold myself back – a room full of people, an audience… I so badly just wanted to call something out although I knew it would be instant death!!! Our BINGO ANGEL opened an individually wrapped mentos and quietly popped it in her mouth. It was enough to set a lady on the table next to us off! When the game had finished the lady had no reservation to put her opinion forth and ask for quiet on the court. Bingo is serious stuff – a religion not to be reckoned with!

ALMOST WON!

Bingo is a lot of fun… I almost filled out an entire game… I was one number off which would have netted me 120 big ones. But the anticipation of waiting for that number to come up was better than winning the cash. My heart rate elevated, mouth a little dry, the anticipation of calling out bingo as soon as that number comes up was intense. Everyone said, “If you hear your last number come up – don’t mark it off just yell out bingo! Cause if they call out another number before you yell out bingo you you’ve lost your chance.” Boy oh boy the pressure… how are the oldies not getting angina from this game?

$10,000 game…

It’s ALL about this game! 60 seconds of play and someone was going home $10,000 richer. I had not noticed, but Emma did… people were putting on their jackets, scarfs and hats in preparation for this game (its winter here).

The game begins and I’m off like a rocket – marking 6 numbers off in a matter of 3 seconds then nothing for what felt like an eternity. I had marked off 3 / 4 of my book and the adrenalin really kicks – concentrate Den, trust your brain to process the numbers and your hand to mark them off, then suddenly… “BINGO!” A lady yells out only 4 tables up from me…

People leap from their seats and dash for the exits. I couldn’t believe it… someone had just won $10,000 and no one claps! No congratulations? Those who lost the $10,000 game were now in a new race – the first to get out the door. What a site!!! Emma, BINGO ANGEL and I sat back to watch the spectacle of a mob disbanding while ONE person sits in elation repeating to herself “oh my God, oh my God… I just won $10,000.” I gave her a gentle clap, and a smile. BINGO ANGEL (a regular to the scene) says “it’s like this every week – a mad rush out of here. You should come and see what it’s like on Pension’s Pay Day!”

THE END RESULT

Would I do it again? HELL YES!

It was a lot of fun, but unfortunately we cannot do it again for date night cause you are not allowed to repeat the same date night twice (well at least within 12 months.)

I’m also rapt that we took ourselves way out of our comfort circle. What I thought would be a shitty night out ended up quite the opposite. Em’s and I couldn’t stop chatting about it on the drive home.

Rate the Date:

Romance Factor: 0/5 (Fluro lights are not your friend)

Cheese Factor: 4/5

Fun Factor: 5/5

Overview: Hiliarious date night, totally pushes your comfort circle and you may even win some moolah! A definite success – go next week!