Beno

Beno (also known as Beno Lifts or benobve), commonly known as BENO or simply Ben, is a lift / elevator filmer, as well as unauthorized elevator surfer from Gillingham in Medway, Kent, United Kingdom.

He is the original founder of the "lift tour" video concept (usually labelled as "custom text^[1] | IT'S LIFT TOUR TIME!")^[2]. He is also the creator of the Beno Building Creator which is an online building creator that creates building files to Skyscraper Simulator (a 3D building simulator).

History

Ben has been interested in elevators since he was three year old^[3]. On February 23, 2009, he started his YouTube channel "benobve"^[4] and started uploading elevator videos after watching videos from other UK elevator YouTube channels such as mrmattandmrchay, Harrihealey02, Lee Thomas, and JackOtis (now closed). He also uploads transportation videos such as trains and buses. The reason why he uploaded all of these videos is because he enjoyed doing it and had an interest in it. He wanted to document lifts brands that did not previously have information on the internet, as well as seeing if the interests in lifts in the UK would grow from just a few people to many. He also wanted to film historic elevators, many of which have been either modernised or replaced since he filmed them. He wanted to document them before they would meet their fate. Most of all, he wanted to film the least known elevators (as well as the ordinary ones which he thought are fun to ride) and he enjoyed doing so. He has also filmed abandoned places and homemade comedy videos, of which the 'Wheelie Bin Is Hungry' series of videos are probably the most well known, as well as his 'It's Random Lift Tour Time' videos (which are lift tour videos with added funny elements to it such as fake programme sponsors and seeing what Evil Owl is up to behind the scenes).

In November 2015, Ben decided to drop the "bve" from his channel name, shortening it to just "Beno" (the "B" was also capitalized).

In February 2018, Ben changed the channel name to "Beno Lifts". This was done as a temporary measure due to an issue with his Google account, and was reverted to "Beno" later.

For the last couple of years, Beno has taken up lift surfing as well as ordinary lift and transport photography.

Lift Surfing & Keys

In recent years, Beno has taken up "lift surfing", using his keys to ride on top of elevators in random buildings, entirely without authorization. The more secure the building is the more reason to go on top of lifts. As well as this, he also likes to use his collection of keys to put lifts into special service modes, use fire mode and access lifts that need a key to access. Beno does this in his "Detailed look at _________" videos, his "Lift adventure" and "Random lift adventure" videos.

Random Lift Tours

Sometime in 2011, Beno launched a new style of his lift tour named "Random Lift Tour". It is a lift tour mixed with random stuff that is usually not related to lifts. It is also often includes short comedic scenes, fake advertising, and even burping and farting noises.

In the United Kingdom

No.	Location	Title	Release date
1	London	Tower Bridge	April 16, 2011
2	London	Kings College Hospital	May 26, 2012
3	Luton and Dunstable	Christmas in Luton and Dunstable (BENO Christmas Special)	January 1, 2013
4	Manchester	Manchester	September 21, 2013
5	Kent	University of Kent	October 13, 2013
6	London	Christmas in London (BENO Christmas Special II)	January 1, 2014

Across Europe with Low Cost Airlines

No.	Location	Title	Release date
1	France Belgium The Netherlands	Cycling and Camping Adventure in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands	October 1, 2014
2	Cologne, Germany	Cheap flight adventure to Cologne in Germany	March 10, 2016
3	Frankfurt, Germany	Cheap flight adventure to Frankfurt in Germany	October 21, 2016

Epic Lift Tours

This is the name that Beno gives to his lift tours, which he claims as "awesome." These lift tours often focus on other things (but not random things) such as buses, trains and other interesting things that relate to the place that Beno is visiting (in other words these videos are not made to be comedic like the Random Lift Tours are). So far 4 of these videos have been made:

No.	Location	Title	Release date
1	Stratford	Olympic Park	September 8, 2012
2	Longford	Heathrow Airport	August 17, 2013
3	Stratford	Olympic Legacy	June 12, 2014
4	London	Gatwick Airport	January 13, 2015

Adventures with Low Cost Transportation

Low Cost Airlines

Year	No.	Location	Currency	Notes / Special
2015	1	Copenhagen, Denmark	Danish krone	Compilation of videos
2016	2	Belfast, Northern Ireland	Pound sterling	Lift tour
	3	Timișoara, Romania	Romanian new leu
	4	Cologne, Germany	Euro	with DewhurstIsSoAmazing
	5	Sofia, Bulgaria	Bulgarian lev
2017	6	Hamburg, Germany	Euro
	7	Giessen, Germany	Euro
	8	Bremen, Germany	Euro
	9	Berlin, Germany	Euro
	10	Toulouse, France	Euro
	11	Glasgow, Scotland	Pound sterling
	12	Edinburgh, Scotland	Pound sterling
	13	Lanzarote island, Spain	Euro
	14	Barcelona, Spain	Euro
	15	Costa Brava, Spain	Euro
	16	Luxembourg, Luxembourg	Euro
	17	Dublin, Ireland	Euro
	18	Poznań, Poland	Polish złoty
	19	Basel, Switzerland	Swiss franc
	20	Benidorm, Spain	Euro
2018	21	Rome, Italy	Euro
	22	Budapest, Hungary	Hungarian forint
	23	Nuremberg, Germany	Euro
	24	Malta	Euro
	25	Mallorca (Majorca) island, Spain	Euro
	26	Kaunas, Lithuania	Euro
	27	Geneva, Switzerland	Swiss franc
	28	Gdańsk, Poland	Polish złoty
	29	Warsaw, Poland	Polish złoty
	30	Bratislava, Slovakia	Euro
	31	Vienna, Austria	Euro
	32	Kraków, Poland	Polish złoty
	33	Kiev (Kyiv), Ukraine	Ukrainian hryvnia
	34	Rabat and Casablanca, Morocco	Moroccan dirham
2019	35	Madrid, Spain	Euro
	36	Tel Aviv, Israel	Israeli new shekel	a.k.a. Cheap flight adventure gone wrong
	37	Eilat, Israel	Israeli new shekel
	38	Naples, Italy	Euro
	39	Lviv, Ukraine	Ukrainian hryvnia
	40	Porto, Portugal	Euro
	41	Beijing, People's Republic of China	Yuan (Renminbi)	A part of the expensive flight adventure to Hong Kong.
	42	Algarve, Portugal	Euro
	43	Nantes, France	Euro
	44	Rennes, France	Euro
	45	Pardubice, Czech Republic	Czech koruna
	46	Prague, Czech Republic	Czech koruna
	47	Tenerife, Spain	Euro	with BefaceComputing
	48	Eindhoven, The Netherlands	Euro
	49	Oslo, Norway	Norwegian krone	with BefaceComputing
	50	Athens, Greece	Euro

Italic = upcoming cheap flight adventure

Low Cost Coaches

Year	No.	Location	Currency	Notes / Special
2017	1	Amsterdam, The Netherlands	Euro

Low Cost Railway

Year	No.	Location	Currency	Notes / Special
2019	1	Shenzhen, People's Republic of China	Yuan (Renminbi)	A part of the expensive flight adventure to Hong Kong.

Parodies in the channel

Stuffed Animal Characters

Beno uses a selection of stuffed toy animals, which represent owners of Generic lift companies that he has invented. The most popular of these is Evil Owl, who made his debut in the random lift tour series, and has been a fixture of Beno's channel since. Evil Owl is the owner of "The Evans Lift Alliance" (parody of the real generic company "Express Lift alliance"), and has a passion for replacing old lifts with his bad quality generics. The second most popular character is High-Rise Hamster, who owns the rival company "High Rise Lift Services".

Advent Calender (2015)

Beno decided to do a 25-episode advent calendar in 2015, later re-titled as the title start with "Eastfields" (parody of Westfields), in which he visits several Westfields shopping centres, as well as various other malls and town centres (Westfields is the main focus though). This series also includes riding on buses and trains, as well as cameos by Evil Owl and High-Rise Hamster.

"Improve" the lift safety story

Beno uses a story from the "Lift and Escalator Industry Association" (LEIA) in the United Kingdom called "Liam Loves Lifts!" to create his own version and make the parody of the story, which include a "lift surfing" scene in the story^[5]^[6]. This also claimed that the original story was not very interesting.

In November, 2017, LEIA sent copyright claims to pull the parody down from YouTube. Beno had won the claim and the video was restored in December, 2017^[7], as he claimed that fulfill the fair use term of the copyright.

"Moo Cow Diarrhoea Tasting Club" magazine

This is the response to the Elevation magazine which was produced for the generic lift companies in the United Kingdom^[8]. This also claimed that the original magazine was "not very interesting."

"JU Mode Adventure" Advent Calender (2017)

Beno decided to do a 25-episode advent calendar again in 2017, advertised as the "JU Mode Adventure"^[9] (one of the mode when the users broke the lift safety circuit), in which he visits several cities in Germany and London in the United Kingdom, This is the first series with the lift surfing scenes.

Controversies

LICmagazinecover — A Poster of the LIC Magazine, taking legal action against Beno

Beno has been accused by many elevator enthusiasts for the promotion and encouragement of dangerous activities to younger elevator enthusiasts, such as lift surfing, using elevator keys for malicious intent and/or trespassing restricted areas.

As a result, some elevator enthusiasts turned against Beno, and Semaphore has led to boycott Beno's glossary such as "Generic" and calling all KONEs an "ecodisc" as a KONE Ecodisc is rare in his country, the Philippines.

However, there were tentative information of the evidence of Beno being a predator, which has been speculated throughout the elevator enthusiast community

He had been accused for disinformation, predatory research and history revisionism, most notably calling the touch-sensitive Schindler M-Series fixtures, from the 80s.

Trivia

Other than being an lift enthusiast, he is also a bus and railway enthusiasts. He also loves urban exploring, cycling, lamp posts, substations, grotty places and forts.
So far, his longest single lift tour video is "Frankfurt Random lift tour" with 32 minutes and 15 seconds duration.^[10]
His longest lift tour in total is his 2015 Advent Calendar, which sees him go to many different Westfield shopping centers in the the UK. The tours is over 2 hours long, but is split up into 25 episodes (as it is an advent Calendar).
He has been filming lifts with BefaceComputing since 2016.
He hates lifts that has been modernized or installed by generic lift companies^[11] or with modern Dewhurst fixtures^[12], or Otis GeN2s around the world, had claimed that they are very "boring and crappy" and less robust than installed by bigger corporate lift companies^[13].
He also hates lifts that installed with those equipment are:
- DMG buttons
- Lester Controls controllers
- Omron Frequency Inverters
- Wittur Group doors (except Kone AMD doors)^[14]
- Fermator Group doors^[14]
His favorite lifts are:
- Express Lift
- Bennie
- Evans Lifts
- Aldous and Campbell
- Schindler lifts with M-Line fixtures (both touch-sensitive and push buttons)
- Schindler 5500 lifts
- SchindlerSmart MRL and SchindlerMobile (Direct Drive)
- Platt-Schindler (Schindler R-Series or 60s electromagnetic solenoid buttons)
- Kone EcoDisc
- Otis 2000 (only fast/traction units)
- Otis lifts built before 1990s
- Mitsubishi
- thyssenkrupp TWIN
- Orona (only if it's running due to his quality standards)