What It Was Like To Compete On Legends Of The Hidden Temple

Nicole's dark journey began when she saw one of those and begged her grandparents to call. "I was actually hoping for Wild & Crazy Kids , but it turned out it was for Legends."

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The auditions were a mini boot camp in which kids scared of moderate physical activity were ousted in humiliating ways. So like Olympic Day at school, but actually important. "For the first test, we had to do a bunch of exercises, like an obstacle course. I breezed through that. A lot of kids got scared climbing ropes and would freeze, with some Nick workers telling them, 'You stay up there, you're out,' and they were out."

Hey, better there than on national TV, in front of all of your friends and millions of strangers.

"Then there was a 'history test,' which really had maybe five history questions, while the rest were like basic science and then TV show questions ... One of the questions was about Ren & Stimpy, and the kid in front of me turned and said, 'Ren was the cat, right?' After he said that, a Nick worker put a hand on his shoulder and took him out of the line. Gone. Like that."

Welcome to the ruthless world of show biz, you little fuckers! "They were looking for certain kids. Half were boys, half were girls -- you know that just by looking at the show -- but to me they picked it almost like a jury. Really hyper kids were knocked out ... crabby kids were gone. Kids who didn't know Nick were gone."

Kids like Nicole, who were well-behaved and survived the barrage of Field Day activities, were in. A few months later, she was driven to the studio, only to find out that ...

If it seems like everyone is in a rush, there's a reason for that. The production was filming five episodes a day in a brutal 14-hour marathon. Coming in, Nicole was given her team (The Green Monkeys) and randomly paired with "some guy I have not talked to before or since." After that, it was a relentless series of kids cranking out game after game, getting through them as quickly as possible.

For efficiency, all of the moat challenges (in which the kids had to cross a swimming pool in some ridiculous way) for all of the episodes were done at once, then they progressed through all of the other stuff they had to shoot in the same fashion.

"It wasn't each group moat, questions, etc. It was group 1, group 2, group 3. Moat, moat, moat. I was waiting backstage, and you saw half the people wet and crying and half the people less wet and ecstatic. There was a girl who went to my school who was on the Silver Snakes, yelling at her teammate about how he wasn't trying. There was a girl backstage from the orange team from another group, and she was spitting up water and gasping when she sat down."

Then Nicole was up.

"Entering that stage to cheering people, it's like when the general entered the stadium in Gladiator. It's a bit of a shock. Then we were told to get on this tire to tire swing thing to go across. My partner, and most of the other kids, looked scared. The person at the beginning lane told us what to do before Kirk Fogg, the host, could. I remember asking him, 'What if we drown?' and he just laughed and didn't answer my question."

These kids were never in any physical danger -- you can bet Nickelodeon didn't want a "death by temple challenge" autopsy on their hands -- but from the way it was set up, many contestants clearly thought they were. Then again, what '90s kid didn't want to die that way? That goddamned temple would finally have an actual legend behind it.

Nicole's team managed to advance, but in the next round, it was all over for the Green Monkeys. "My partner was an idiot. He didn't know who Montezuma was, despite the talking head explaining that and a producer telling us before we went on. Seriously. I've already been divorced once now, and I'm more angry about my partner messing that up in 1993."

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The key words there are "on TV." Seeing it up close was enough to ruin a childhood. "On the other side of those sets, like the Temple Run, it was bare plywood ... they didn't bother painting the side not on camera." Look, we knew it wasn't an actual temple or anything, but you'd think they'd put out some trivial effort to make it less sad for the contestants. It's almost as if they enjoyed disillusioning them.

"The temple run itself was like going through a cheap haunted house. My team was eliminated before going in, but we got to do a run after for fun ... It was a mix between a haunted house and a McDonald's playplace."

The statues were arguably even sadder.

"Olmec, the giant stone head ... on set it was this moving rubber thing that, if you were close enough, you could hear the parts inside moving. The silver monkey (which no one ever got right) was even cheaper than you think. It felt like heavy compressed foam and had silver bits that flaked off ... It just ruined it. It was all hard foam to look like rocks, and signs out of camera view saying to avoid the dry ice."