In the days preceding Tomb Blaster, guests could enter the forbidding Terror Tomb and join a harrowing journey through the booby-trapped filled catacombs with Abdab, a greedy tomb robber bent on stealing the priceless emerald. The ride was a replacement for The Fifth Dimension which has struggled since its opening to strike a chord with guests, partly due to its obscure and quirky story. It was decided that a more appealing 'horror' approach would be best suited for the ride and so Farmer Studios was called upon to create the new setting and characters.
The experience would start as guests passed the snoring Abdab, asleep at his ticket office. A secret door would slide open to allow guests entry into the tomb. Here, they boarded a train and rounded a corner where Abdab, now awake, would yell angrily at the passengers and threaten that their trespass would be punished.
At the top of the ramp, Abdab unleashed hundreds of snakes through a hole in the wall and into the pit below. Every now and again, a serpent would leap up from the pit and hiss at the startled passengers all the while, the maniacal Abdab menaced riders.
After passing more slithering snakes, the train would come to a stop before huge wooden spikes bound by ropes waiting to swing up from the ground and impale the helpless passengers. An animated scene would play out wherein which Abdab, rather than unleashing the spikes, would accidentally discover the emerald before falling into a sarcophagus.
The train moved out of the chamber and past a jackal in a cage and a skeleton being lowered into a fire pit. We would then be startled as some axe-throwing shadows attacked. The train would rotate to travel past a Lava Pit with a huge statue of the God Anubis. Abdab clung onto a collapsing obelisk as he tried to reach for the emerald, now worn on a ring on the statue's paw.
The train travelled through a spinning tunnel before emerging in a chamber which exploded with colour and sound as a mummy clutching an electric guitar began to perform a heavy metal rock song. Abdab was trapped in an iron maiden, bound by leather straps. He looked on helplessly as the music climaxed and the lid was shut, transforming him into one of the resident ghouls.
We left this scene and into a corridor in which mummies jumped out at the passengers providing a final big scare. Abdab made one final appearance, this time as a rotting ghoul clutching the glowing emerald, boasting it was now his forever.
The ride operated until 2002 when it was replaced by Tomb Blaster, due to changing attitudes regarding what was seen as 'appropriate' for Chessington's family audience. The ride has something of a cult following, with the original music for the attraction being recently re-released for purchase online.
