This past week our team at KnightNews.com headed to downtown Orlando to catch a glimpse of the American Idol auditions at the Amway Arena.
And although we were originally on the hunt for UCF students, we came across some very interesting acts, like a drag queen named “Natasha” Hilton.
Hilton said he tried out for American Idol before, but was denied. He was hoping the drag would get him noticed. We never found out if he made it through, but judge for yourself whether or not he should by watching our video report. (Feel free to share your comments below).
As we continued our search for UCF students, we found louder than life Gospel groups who belted out in harmony for our cameras.
We found a few proud UCF alumni, and we even found a man in a Zorro cape and mask, who had a sultry voice.
But in the enormous crowd of 10,000 people, where were all the UCF students?
Finally, we found a set of UCF twins named Lisa and Gina Gomez. They sang in beautiful harmony, but they didn’t make it.
“It really is luck, and it really depends on what judge you get and what they want,” said Lisa Gomez. “It has nothing to do with talent.”
Because these two other twins before us…they were horrible,” added Gina Gomez. “But they had another judge and they got through. I guess our judged didn’t like twins, I guess it all depends.”
Then we stumbled across UCF Senior Dani McVey with her guitar who sang a beautiful rendition of “Wonderwall” by Oasis.
Sadly, none of the UCF students we met made it to the next round. But we caught up with a few who did, including a young Russian named Anzrey Youshkevich who now lives in New York, but traveled to Orlando in his overalls and “worker style” outift.
“Don’t be nervous,” he said in his thick accent, “if you want to make it, wear overalls!”
American Idol officials wouldn’t let him sing to us, so we don’t know if Youshkevich made it because of his angelic voice, or solely because of his overalls.
So we’ll have to wait until the show debuts in January to see how he did.
KnightNews.com is teaming up with American Idol producers to put on a UCF American Idol viewing party when the season begins, so sign up on the bottom right of your screen for updates regarding that, and we’ll find out together how all the Idol hopefuls we met did in front of Simon Cowell.
Be sure to watch our “Raw Videos” showing more singing and interviews, and our video story showing our hunt for the UCF Idols.
