Good Housekeeping Article: The Double Dare Challenge

A Pinoy family bags the grand prize in Nickelodeon’s Double Dare 2000 game show! Gabby and Mabel Lim, with their kids Alisa and Mikee, took on the challenge of Double Dare 2000 and went home with the grand prize – an all expense paid trip to Hawaii! It all started with a letter 10-year old Alisa sent to Nickelodeon to qualitfy for Double Dare 2000, dubbed “as the grossest, most physically and intellectually demanding game show on cable television”.“My family enjoys doing things together. But mom and dad always take care of the expenses”, wrote Alisa to Nickelodeon. “My brother and I would like to do something special for them and Double Dare 2000 is it. We always watch this show and dream we will be in it one day. It will be a big surprise to mom and dad.” Well, it turned out to be one big surprise indeed.A few days later, the Nickelodeon crew was at their doorstep saying that they had qualified for the semifinals. The crew took footage of the family doing wacky stunts right in their own living room. “We had to pass hoola hoops to each other without using our hands and we had to do the newspaper dance,” says Alisa. Ten days later, they were chosen to represent the Philippines in the special games to be held at the Nickelodeon studios in Florida, USA. 

To prepare for the show, Gabby, a former varsity player at San Beda College, took on the role of head coach. Weekends saw him bringing the whole family to the village park to train the kids in teamwork and coordination. Mabel bought trivia books and started quizzing her brood.

Three days after they arrived in Florida, the Lim family geared up for battle. Double Dare pits two families against each other in two rounds of trivia and outrageous physical challenges that call for a lot of guts and a healthy sense of humor.

Pressure was intense. This was, in essence, their Olympics. Mabel was so nervous that she developed a stomachache during the first few minutes of the show. Added to the pressure was the fact that they were, according to Mikee, “bokya” (scoreless) during the first round. Fortunately they won the next two rounds which included “fixing” a giant meal of spaghetti by throwing humongous rubber meatballs, plastic pasta noodles, and gooey red sauce into a giant bowl. Winning those rounds qualified them to tackle the demanding Slobstacle Course, an eight-stage obstacle course to be finished in one minute. They finished it with on second to spare.

More than the prizes that they brought home, Gabby and Mabel are thankful for the way the Double Dare experience brought them closer as a family. “It encouraged us to spend more time with each other, specially during the weekends,” says Gabby. “Giving up my career was the most difficult thing I had ever done. It was even harder than deciding to get married,” confesses Mabel. “But seeing the fruit – that Alisa was able to write something like that – you realize that it was worth it.” But no, Mabel clarifies, they aren’t dreaming of becoming professional contestants.

— by Jennifer Yap Caspe
From “Good Housekeeping” Magazine
December 2000 issue