Line #52 Main/DumbwaiterRide


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14	[[quoteright:350:[[Literature/TheSpiderwickChronicles https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/screenshot_25_6.png]]]]
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16	->''"It was a dumbwaiter. No, I am not being rude about some poor old waiter--a dumbwaiter is a kind of elevator. I knew that because there used to be one just like it in the first-kitchen-on-the-right-just-past-the-laundry-room, and that is what Aunt Tabby used to call it. I remember one rainy day I was so bored and I got inside the elevator and hauled myself up to the dining room. It was the best fun ever, and I spent all afternoon going up and down until Aunt Tabby caught me."''
17	-->-- '''Angie Sage''', ''Literature/AramintaSpookie: My Haunted House''
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19	The dumbwaiter has been a fixture in [[BigFancyHouse Big, Fancy Houses]] for [[https://blog.stannahlifts.co.uk/the-history-of-a-dumb-waiter over a thousand years.]] A miniature elevator between the walls, it is designed for transporting food, laundry, and other objects between floors in a building when carrying them would be inconvenient. What it's not designed for is carrying people.
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21	And yet, something about this small, mobile space is irresistible to characters in fiction. Maybe you're a [[ConstantlyCurious curious youngster]] exploring the old mansion your family just moved into, maybe you're escaping from an enemy and there aren't any [[AirVentPassageway air ducts]] nearby, or maybe you just saw what looked like a tiny elevator and thought, [[ItAmusedMe "Hey, I bet I could fit in that thing!"]]. Whatever the reason, you're contributing to the universal law that whenever a dumbwaiter appears in fiction, no matter its size, someone will take a ride in it.
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23	Most modern dumbwaiters are motorized, but the ones appearing in fiction can usually be operated from within by pulling on a rope to hoist oneself up. Often {{justified\|Trope}} by the character taking the ride being a child who is just barely small enough to fit inside. A ScareDare may be involved, as these spaces (beyond being potentially dangerous, especially in old buildings) can easily induce {{Claustrophobia}}. Expect [[CobwebOfDisuse Cobwebs of Disuse]].
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25	'''''Definitely'' do not try this one at home--as noted, dumbwaiters are ''not'' built for people.'''
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27	Subtrope of SecretPath; Sister trope to AirVentPassageway, ChimneyEntry, and SecretUndergroundPassage. Will often lead to a SecretRoom in an OldDarkHouse, CoolHouse, HauntedHouse, or BigLabyrinthineBuilding. Can often be used for an unconventional ElevatorEscape. Unsurprisingly, it's easier to hit a MaximumCapacityOverload and cause ElevatorFailure in one of these than in a full-size lift. Compare MobileMaze. See also ArtisticLicenseEngineering.
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30	!!Examples:
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32	[[foldercontrol]]
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34	[[folder:Films -- Animation]]
35	* ''WesternAnimation/{{Wish 2023}}'': Since the king doesn't allow anyone else in his study where he keeps the wishes and practices his magic, he has a dumb waiter-type system for sending food up from the palace kitchens when he wants to eat in there. Asha uses this to sneak in (being best friends with the palace baker has its advantages).
36	[[/folder]]
37
38	[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
39	* ''Film/Asylum1972Horror'' has a variant in that [[spoiler:the rider is not human, and {{justified\|Trope}} given its small size]]. When the patients' dinners are sent up to the ward by dumbwaiter, [[spoiler:Byron directs his robotic instrument of murder]] to sneak into the dumbwaiter, riding it down to the first floor where [[spoiler:it can murder Dr. Rutherford]].
40	* In the 1916 Creator/CharlieChaplin film ''Film/TheCount'', Mr. Chaplin hides in an unusually-large dumbwaiter just as the butler upstairs is summoning it. He gives one of the party guests quite a fright when he arrives on the upper floor.
41	* ''Film/{{Cry Wolf\|1947}}'': Played for drama. Susan's husband Jim is supposedly dead, but Susan begins to think that her brother-in-law Mark, who is obviously up to ''something'' nefarious, may be holding Jim prisoner in his attic laboratory. When Susan finds out that Mark gets his meals sent to the lab by dumbwaiter, she hauls herself up. Her husband isn't there, but she overhears a suspicious conversation before she has to go back down via dumbwaiter, barely avoiding being caught.
42	* In ''Film/HalloweenH20TwentyYearsLater'', Michael Myers hides Charlie's body in the dumbwaiter. When his girlfriend, Sarah, finds the body, she's forced to get inside it and try to ride it down with his body, but Myers tampers with the dumbwaiter's rope, further incapacitating her. [[spoiler:She makes it out of the dumbwaiter but Michael rides it down too, and kills her.]]
43	* In ''Film/HomeAlone3'', Alex uses a dumbwaiter to evade the terrorists who were looking for him. One of them realizes this was how he got outside the house from the attic after she and two of her cohorts realize too late the trampoline was a trap (the two men jumped into the trampoline, which caused them to get stuck in the frozen swimming pool) and tries it herself, but the moment the dumbwaiter reaches the attic, [[BatmanGambit she falls down the shaft, because Alex removed the bottom shortly before escaping the house]].
44	* ''Film/JurassicWorldFallenKingdom'': Maisie Lockwood uses a dumbwaiter to maneuver around her family mansion and hide from the antagonist Eli Mills and later the hybrid dinosaur the Indoraptor.
45	* ''Film/PackUpYourTroubles'': The cops have come to arrest Creator/LaurelAndHardy and seize the HeartwarmingOrphan they've been looking after. Stan and Ollie attempt to escape by lowering the little girl out via dumbwaiter and following. Stan breaks the dumbwaiter, which results in Ollie falling all the way to the bottom.
46	* ''Film/ReadyOrNot'': The initial place Grace finds to hide is the dumbwaiter on the second floor, but she doesn't take a ride in it, just sits inside until she gets bored and climbs out again. [[spoiler:Later she returns to the dumbwaiter, possibly to try to use it to escape the house, only to find one of the maids hiding in it. In the scuffle after the maid calls for help, the lift's button is pressed and she is crushed to death between the closing doors.]]
47	* ''Film/ShootEmUp'': Donna makes a quick escape in a dumbwaiter during the penthouse shootout scene.
48	* Film/TheThreeStooges' short "Three Little Pigskins" has the boys try to escape a beating by taking a dumbwaiter into the basement. HilarityEnsues when Curly goes down first, but fails to notice that the lift's floorboard gave out and broke off under his weight while he was sending it back up.
49	* ''Film/TroubleMan'' has a variation. Instead of riding in the dumbwaiter, T pulls himself up the ropes of a disused dumbwaiter shaft.
50	* In ''Film/WhoeverSlewAuntieRoo'', Christopher pulls himself up to Katharine's secret nursery, where he sees Aunt Roo singing to Katharine's skeleton. [[spoiler:Later, he tries to do the same thing to rescue Katy from the nursery. Aunt Roo catches him and cuts the dumbwaiter ropes so they can't escape.]]
51	* Briefly mentioned in ''Film/YoungFrankenstein''. Igor's explanation for how he got to Victor's secret laboratory is that he used the dumbwaiter.
52	* ''Film/{{Zathura}}'': Danny uses his home's dumbwaiter to hide from his brother, and later to move around the house without being seen by the Zorgons.
53	[[/folder]]
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55	[[folder:Literature]]
56	* In the novel ''Literature/{{Airborn}}'' protagonist Matt Cruse uses a dumbwaiter to move through the airship ''Aurora'' after it is hijacked by pirates.
57	* In the children's novel ''Literature/AramintaSpookie: My Haunted House'', the title character discovers a dumbwaiter at the end of a SecretPath leading up to SecretRoom. She knows how to use it because one of her house's kitchens also contains one, connecting it to the dining room, and she has amused herself by riding up and down in it.
58	* ''Daughter of Dragons'', in the ''Literature/LiadenUniverse'' series: The Korval family's house in the city has a dumbwaiter connecting the kitchen with the service entrance where supplies are brought into the house. Kareen recalls her young brother Daav playing in it when he was a boy, and at the end of the story she goes down in it herself to evade assassins searching the house (finding it much less fun for a full-grown woman who can barely squeeze into the space and knows how dangerous it is).
59	* ''Literature/FeetOfClay'' sees an AssassinationAttempt on the Patrician. Taking over security at the Patrician's Palace, Vimes covers an avenue of approach to the city ruler's sickroom--the dumbwaiter--by having a heavily armed dwarf riding in it.
60	* ''Literature/TheFinishingSchoolSeries'': In ''Etiquette & Espionage'', the first book of the series, the 'incident' that gets Sophronia Temminnick sent to a finishing school by her mother involves her riding inside a dumbwaiter in an attempt to eavesdrop on a meeting between her mother and a very important guest. It ends with [[ItMakesSenseInContext her lying on the floor in her petticoats with India rubber wrapped around her feet and most of a trifle atop the head of the unfortunate Mrs Barnaclegoose]].
61	* In the ''Literature/{{Goosebumps}}'' book ''Literature/TheHeadlessGhost'', one of the ghosts was a rich SpoiledBrat in life who was addicted to ice cream that his butler would bring up to his bedroom through a dumbwaiter. One time, he greedily crawled inside after he got tired of waiting and [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome immediately fell to his death]].
62	* ''Literature/HarrietTheSpy'': Harriet breaks into the mansion of Agatha Plummer and gets caught hiding in her dumbwaiter. This is carried over to the film adaptation as well.
63	* An early Literature/HerculePoirot story has the dumbwaiter considered as a way out for the murderer, as it had been used to bring dinner for three men that evening. [[spoiler:In fact the murderer was the victim's manservant, who killed his employer then ordered three dinners to make it look as though the victim has received people that evening.]]
64	* In the ''Literature/MegLangslowMysteries'' book ''Owl's Well That Ends Well," Meg uses the old dumbwaiter in her new house to eavesdrop on the police investigation, as they're using her dining room for on-site interviews. Trouble comes when her nephew and a friend discover the shaft and end up jumping onto the top of the dumbwaiter, but in the end the boys are caught and she isn't. She makes use of this trick in at least one more book later.
65	* ''Literature/TheMissingPieceOfCharlieOReilly'': The New York Asylum for Orphaned Children has a dumbwaiter. [[spoiler:Charlie's final memory as Kieran is of being trapped in the burning Asylum with his mother Brona. The two tried to escape by riding the dumbwaiter to a lower floor, only to find themselves trapped in the wine cellar. There's a hidden door behind a shelf that leads to the salt mine, but neither of them knows about it, so Kieran is killed when the first floor caves in.]]
66	* ''Literature/NinaTanleven'': In ''The Ghost in the Big Brass Bed'', Nina resorts to hiding in the dumbwaiter when she thinks there's a prowler in Phoebe's house. In an effort to escape, she winds up bouncing up and down an inch or so to try and get it to go down, which results in the rope breaking and the dumbwaiter falling the rest of the way; thankfully, except for biting her tongue enough to draw blood, she's unharmed when it lands and is able to sneak out of the house.
67	* ''Literature/TheSpiderwickChronicles'': In ''The Field Guide'', the Grace siblings find a dumbwaiter in the kitchen of their old family home and use it to try to chase an animal they can hear scrabbling in the walls. Because Mallory is too big to fit inside, Jared rides it and discovers a SecretRoom containing mysterious riddles.
68	[[/folder]]
69
70	[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
71	* ''Series/AgentCarter''. Howard Stark has to sneak into The Griffith hotel (because men aren't allowed), and is reluctant to try this trope.
72	-->'''Howard Stark''': What if the chain snaps and I fall to my death?\
73	'''Peggy''': Don't worry, I'll never reveal that Howard Stark's dead body is lying rotting in the bottom of a dumbwaiter shaft.
74	* In ''Series/ArrestedDevelopment'', magician Tony Wonder hides in restaurant dumbwaiters in order to appear suddenly at dinner meetings. The effectiveness of this is lessened by the fact that he's usually covered in food scraps afterwards.
75	* On ''Series/{{Cheers}}'', in 10th-season finale "[[Recap/CheersS10E25 An Old-Fashioned Wedding]]", the dumbwaiter at the Gaines mansion gets quite a bit of usage when Woody and Kelly get married. First, Kelly hides in it since Woody's there and the ceremony hasn't started yet. Then the justice of the peace dies and they send him to the basement in it. When they try to bring him back up, he's gone. Now, Carla goes down the dumbwaiter to find him, only to get dropped. Both times she tries to come back up, she gets dropped again.
76	* The ''Series/DoctorWho'' story "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS14E6TheTalonsOfWengChiang The Talons of Weng-Chiang]]" has Jago and Litefoot attempting to use a dumbwaiter to escape from Magnus Greel and his followers.
77	* ''Series/TheHauntingOfHillHouse2018'': Theo and Luke discover a dumbwaiter in the house and decide to mess around in it. However, instead of going up, the dumbwaiter sends Luke ''down'' into a [[SecretRoom mysterious basement room]], leaving him at the mercy of a frightening creature while his parents struggle to call the dumbwaiter back to the kitchen.
78	* During a plan to assassinate a roomful of German generals having a meeting in a hotel via exploding centerpieces on ''Series/HogansHeroes'', the crew learns from a spy that the meeting was actually to give the generals the plans for the defense of France in preparation for an Allied invasion. The spy, after learning of the plan, leaves his copy in the dining room after it had been cleared out so the Heroes can steal it. This meant [=LeBeau=] had to ride the dumbwaiter back up to the room (he'd done so earlier to try and disarm the bombs, but a pair of guards foiled his attempt). He makes it back just before the bombs go off, though a dejected Carter notes the bombs went off one minute later than he planned.
79	* In the Creator/AppleTVPlus series ''Series/HomeBeforeDark'' episode "Dark Rooms", Hilde and her friends Donnie and Spoon sneak inside a kitchen dumbwaiter to go down into the basement while investigating Wott Management at the Catherine Higgins House.
80	* On ''Series/LaverneAndShirley'', Lenny and Squiggy get in trouble with Mrs. Babish when they ride the building's dumbwaiter playing "Coal Miner".
81	* In the ''Series/{{MacGyver\|1985}}'' episode "Fire & Ice", Mac sneaks into a consulate pretending to be a kitchen hand carrying a box of vegetables, then climbs into the kitchen's dumbwaiter to reach the upper level.
82	* ''Series/{{Wednesday}}'' episode "[[Recap/WednesdayS1E6QuidProWoe Quid Pro Woe]]": Wednesday and Enid hide from the monster in the Gates Manor's dumbwaiter. It tries to reach them by clawing at the door, but the shaking and the weight of the girls mean the rope holding the dumbwaiter gives up first, sending them falling to the basement.
83	[[/folder]]
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85	[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
86	* In ''TabletopGame/BetrayalAtHouseOnTheHill'' dumbwaiters can allow characters to move between different floors of the mansion.
87	* ''TabletopGame/CallOfCthulhu'' supplement ''The Asylum And Other Tales'', adventure "The Auction". The House of Ausperg has several dumbwaiters that go from the second floor preparation rooms down to the basement vaults in which auction items are stored. After a pack of ghouls breaks into the vaults to steal an item, courageous investigators can choose to use one of the dumbwaiters to go down to the basement instead of using the stairs.
88	[[/folder]]
89
90	[[folder:Video Games]]
91	* In ''VideoGame/OneHundredAndOneDalmatiansEscapeFromDeVilManor'', two dalmatian puppies, Patches and Whizzer, can ride in a dumbwaiter to every floor in the titular mansion, although the attic level has to be unblocked from the other side, first.
92	* In Scott Adam's ''Adventure'' series of [[RolePlayingGame role playing games]], specifically the second series called ''The Count'', the player can access Dracula's castle though a dumbwaiter.
93	* At one point in ''VideoGame/AmnesiaAMachineForPigs'' you are forced to climb into a mechanical dumbwaiter used for transporting corrosive chemicals to ride to the lower level when the doors are found to be locked. [[spoiler:''Something'' sabotages the elevator halfway down, and you fall the rest of the way.]]
94	* In ''VideoGame/{{Curses}}'', some parts of the house must be reached via the dumbwaiter. It leads from the attic to the cellar, and a passageway halfway up the shaft leads to the garden.
95	* In ''VideoGame/DeusEx'', riding a dumbwaiter is one of the possible ways to enter a locked room at the Chateau [=DuClare=].
96	* In ''VideoGame/LeisureSuitLarry6ShapeUpOrSlipOut'', the only way for Larry to get to Shamara's penthouse suite is to stuff himself into the dumbwaiter while in the kitchen and ride up. Being Larry, he almost always manages to close the door on his hand or nose first.
97	* ''VideoGame/LittleNightmares'': Justified because the {{Player Character}}s are small children in a world of massive {{Monstrous Humanoid}}s.
98	** In the main game, Six finds a dumbwaiter in the kitchen and rides in it up to the meat freezer.
99	** In the second chapter of the DLC, the Runaway Kid rides between floors in a dumbwaiter apparently intended for coal and then has to use it to transport three [[NonPlayerCharacter Nomes]] back down with him.
100	* ''VideoGame/LuigisMansionDarkMoon'': In mission A-4 of Gloomy Manor, Luigi uses a dumbwaiter to get from the kitchen to the dining room to capture a Boo hiding in there.
101	* In ''VideoGame/PajamaSamInNoNeedToHideWhenItsDarkOutside'', there's a sentient dumbwaiter in Darkness's House that leads from the laboratory to the kitchen and vice-versa. Sam can ride the dumbwaiter up from the lab to the kitchen, but if he tries to ride it down to the lab, the dumbwaiter will prevent him from doing so. In the path where Sam's mask is hidden under a sentient table that dances when it doesn't see Sam, Sam needs to use a [[InvisibilityWithDrawbacks short-term invisibility]] potion on himself. However, the only way quick enough to get up to the living room, which is right next door to the kitchen, is by riding the dumbwaiter.
102	* In ''VideoGame/PizzaTower'', entering a new floor for the first time shows a cutscene of Peppino riding in one of these, all the while being lifted up by Gerome.
103	* ''Trivia Murder Party 2'' (part of ''VideoGame/TheJackboxPartyPack 6'') uses this for its "Dumb Waiters" mini-game. Participants must secretly choose whether to board either the left or right dumbwaiter; if everybody gets into the same one, [[PrisonersDilemma they're all spared]]. If not, however, the host will drop everyone on the heavier side to their doom.
104	* In ''VideoGame/VampireTheMasqueradeBloodlines'', climbing into the dumbwaiter in the kitchen of the Ocean House Hotel is the only way to get to its upper floors.
105	* In ''VideoGame/WhereInTimeIsCarmenSandiego1997'', the level based on UsefulNotes/TheAmericanRevolution has the crook hiding in UsefulNotes/ThomasJefferson[='s=] dumbwaiter. Or as your ExpositionFairy puts it, "the dummy was waiting in the dumbwaiter."
106	[[/folder]]
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108	[[folder:Web Original]]
109	* One story in the Website/DarwinAwards involves two guys who decide to take a ride in a dumbwaiter. Unfortunately, they both squeeze in at the same time, and their combined weight sends them falling to their deaths. Then their buddy sticks his head in the shaft and gets killed by the counterweight.
110	[[/folder]]
111
112	[[folder:Western Animation]]
113	* ''WesternAnimation/HarrietTheSpy'' features a dumbwaiter ride just like in the [[Literature/HarrietTheSpy original book]]. It ends a bit differently.
114	* ''WesternAnimation/{{Littlest Pet Shop\|2012}}'': Blythe and occasionally the pets use a dumbwaiter to travel from Blythe's upper room to the downstairs playroom at the eponymous shop.
115	* ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'':
116	** In "WesternAnimation/DaffyDilly", WesternAnimation/DaffyDuck is trying to evade the butler of a millionaire. At one point he tries to escape in the dumb waiter, but the butler is somehow waiting for him on every floor, even shooting at him with a rifle that obliterates the dumb waiter, so Daffy has to climb the rope to the top floor, where the butler is waiting for him.
117	** "WesternAnimation/CattyCornered" also saw Sylvester use a dumb-waiter, to take Tweety with him as the cops were storming the digs Rocky and Mugsy were using as a hideaway.
118	* In the ''WesternAnimation/MuppetBabies1984'' episode, "Is There a Muppet in the House?", Animal discovers that the house a dumbwaiter, believing it to be a secret passage, and has been using it to get around. By the end of the episode, Nanny explains what it is and what it's used for, she then warns Animal not to play in it anymore because it could be dangerous.
119	[[/folder]]

Context Main / DumbwaiterRide