When Dana Lynn Van Der Horst visits Orlando this month with her family, she expects to collect more than a pair of Mickey Mouse ears. Dana, one of four Chicago area winners in a national audition for a children`s cable television channel, will return home with a videotape of her first performance before the cameras. Plus a lot of memories of the prize trip and other goodies she won.
”I never expected to win,” said the 13-year-old Schaumburg girl, who attends 8th grade at Margaret Mead Junior High School. She and the other winners defeated 1,000 other kids in an all-day session last summer at Yorktown shopping mall in Lombard. Only recently did she learn from the channel Nickelodeon when she would be flown to Florida for her stint on a new game show called ”Nick Arcade.”
She will have plenty of support during her television debut, she said:
”My mother will use the other free airplane ticket to come with me, and my dad and brother will go, too.”
As to what prompted her to compete, she said, ”I don`t have any theater experience or anything. I just thought it would be nice to be on TV. The audition took the whole day, but it was really worth it.”
