Basic Trope: A character is too short for a theme park ride.
- Straight: Alice wants to ride a roller coaster that her friends have been on, but when she goes to measure herself for the ride, she finds she's too short.
- Exaggerated: Alice is a lilliputian and the ride is only for giants.
- Downplayed: Alice is a centimeter too short for the ride.Alice: Dang it, so close!
- Justified:
- Alice is the shortest in her social circle because her parents were short or she's a late bloomer.
- The ride Alice wants to go on has to have a height requirement by law, if she went on the ride at her current height, she would be in danger of falling out.
- Inverted: Alice wants to ride a kiddie ride but she's too tall.
- Subverted: Alice thinks she's going to be too short, but it turns out that she's just tall enough.
- Double Subverted: But she needs to take her shoes off and she's too short when she takes her shoes off.
- Parodied: Alice is a gnome.
- Zig-Zagged: Alice is deemed too short to ride a roller coaster, so she uses her shapeshifting powers to grow, only to be deemed too tall to ride now. So, she shuffles her height until she's allowed to pass.
- Averted:
- Alice is the right height for the roller coaster.
- Alice does not go to a theme park.
- For some reason, the ride doesn't have a height requirement.
- Enforced:
- The writers wanted to set up An Aesop about patience.
- …and/or following safety regulations.
- Lampshaded: "How come we're the same age but I'm still too short for the ride?"
- Invoked: The designers of the roller coaster do not allow people under a certain height to ride it.
- Exploited: Alice is scared to ride the roller coaster, so she's glad that she's too short.
- Defied: Alice calls the theme park ahead to find out if they have height requirements on their roller coasters. She makes a point of only going to those where she meets the requirement.
- Discussed: "My daughter's still a bit steamed because she's too short for the roller coaster."
- Conversed: "That scene with the girl being too short for the roller coaster brought back memories."
- Implied: Alice is seen being measured by Carol near a roller coaster and Carol shakes her head.
- Deconstructed:
- Despite being too short for the ride, Alice manages to go on anyway. Because the ride's safety harnesses don't fit her, she is severely injured by the ride.
- With the limit allowed to exceed beyond the required height, the extremely tall Alice finds out the hard way that she's now too tall to ride.
- Reconstructed: The height limit is balanced out.
- Played for Laughs: Alice does wacky things like stand on stilts and sit on Bob's shoulders with a trench coat.
- Played for Drama: Alice angsts about being short.
Back to You Must Be This Tall to Ride.
