Considering this is a dark ride it should be pretty interesting. I would love to see the work shop area. At the moment there is no behind the scenes photos or videos that I can find.

Wouldn't it be nice ... And MIB alien attack at universal

Tomb Blaster is the ride I would most like to see behind the scenes of at Chessington! It's all in the dark, plus you're concentrating on shooting, so it's hard to notice a lot, other than the obvious props and scenery. It would be really interesting to see what the place looks like with the lights on!
On the topic of Tomb Blaster, I went on it for the first time in years in August, and I'm so glad I did! I hadn't been on for ages after being absolutely terrified on the ride aged seven, and it kind of stopped me from riding again. I know it isn't exactly the most exciting ride, but it's just really nice to rediscover a ride you've avoided for so long. 

Sometimes it's nice to just sit and enjoy the ride.

If your're not concentrating on shooting you can really notice the finer details and theming.

^I've done that, it's so much nicer than when you shoot! Shooting results in bad scores and achy fingers, not shooting means it's a ride you can appreciate!

Exactly; I've never shot things on this ride - and it's the same with Duel.  I wish for Halloween they'd turn the darn shooters off; I hate them all.

With Duel I don't use the guns, the ride is very good without them. For Tomb Blaster, I have been in a position many times when the guns have not worked and the ride is so boring, you look at other people and they are just bored. The reason for this is that before they installed the guns, there was a story, not it is just music which is great for shooting, but IMO you have to use the gun to avoid getting bored.


Compared to Duel, the throughput of Tomb blaster seems really slow

^I always find that! Was on park on Wednesday, the queue for tomb blaster was 75mins! Duel would never get anything like that!

But Duel is a different ride system to Tomb Blaster so the most you ever seem to get is about 15 mins queue 

Tomb Blaster is also one of Chessington's signature rides with their family market so it's straight away going to beat Duel on popularity. Also Towers has far more rides around the park to distract people than Chessington does.

As for the shooting element, whilst that many people, including John Wardley, dislike this element of the ride it is very popular with the general public and gave the Haunted House a new lease of life. I don't agree that you necessarily miss alot of the theming. If you're concentrating heavily on shooting, then yes there may be one or two bits you miss, but on the whole I can still appreciate the detail that's gone into creating Duel and Tomb Blaster.

Dragging this topic back from the depths, as I fear it will soon have the [retired] tag next to it.

Chessington have broken this ride. The state it was in yesterday, I feel they perhaps should have just not bothered to open it. This is quite sad, because it was a ride I often looked forward to and would ride a few times in a visit.

First up the queue. It stated 40 minutes, but the line was just to the top of the outdoor stairs leading down. It should also be noted that there is a holding point inside now, which if it hadn't been there, would have meant the entire queue would have been inside the core themed indoor area. My expectations, this was a 5-10 minute queue. Wrong. It was much closer to 40 than it had any right to be. (Edit: for reference, queue time used to be an hour if the queue line hit the actual entrance and used the entire long queue, back when the ride first opened.)

Inside, it seemed strange that they were letting groups of about 8-10 people through at a time to go to the station. When each train can hold around 30 people, this seemed odd, even if holding a car back for RAP. At the station it became clear, of 3 consecutive trains that I saw, there were 4 entire cars roped off and out of action. That's very close to an entire train inoperable. Then it appeared car 2 was to be used by RAP and only RAP. So if no one was waiting for RAP, that car was sent out empty. On the train I was on, there were 10 people taken from the regular queue and 4 from RAP. Fast track now feeds into the main line at the holding point, using an old emergency exit.

Things didn't get much better. This is the worst state I've ever seen the ride, with scenery, effects and audio missing throughout the ride.

In the queue line, one of the TVs showing instructions for the ride had been removed, whilst the other was on standby. In the ride, the boulder no longer works again. The snake room has no smoke, meaning you can just see the entire backstage mechanism that operates the rotating snakes, lit up horrendously brightly. The scene where knives are thrown at you by shadows on the wall, no sound effects at all, in fact barely any audio at all. The final room, it just seemed to be running part of the audio, and felt like someone had just left a portable CD player with a single speaker in there somewhere and removed all of the actual audio system. The ride felt hollow.

Clearly this ride received little to no maintenance over the winter. At least when they gave up on Bubbleworks, capacity remained high, the audio worked and most of the scenes worked. It seems to me they've given up on Tomb Blaster now, and given that 3, of what I would presume the best quality, trains they have, are significantly broken, I'd be surprised to see this continue much longer. If it even makes it to the end of this year.

I was surprised to see how much of a queue it had yesterday! I didn’t get the chance to ride it, but hearing the state it is in now is so sad.

I saw these issues on Sunday too and it's a shame :'(

We went there for our first ride of the day and the "5" minute queue ended up being about half an hour. Then as you said, lots of effects are down and it feels very tired (although the trommel tunnel was working surprisingly). The newer shooting system with the big clumsy lights and squeaky guns also ruins the theming and atmosphere.

It's easy to see that even the staff are frustrated with the low throughput and the ride seems to be at the end of its life, so it would be good to see a big ol' revamp. I'd love a new dark ride with an original theme to happen, with new animatronics, audio etc. (However if it is rethemed, it'll probably be turned into another Julia Donaldson book ride).

That is very disappointing to hear. I have found memories of this ride prior to its recent incarnation, so to hear that it is in poor condition is disappointing. Hopefully Chessington have identified this as an issue and are working on a rebrand!

It's really disappointing to hear this, I don't get to Chessington often but I always loved Tomb Blaster. I love dark rides , I just wish they were maintained better and this truly sounds like it's being left to rot.

Like Alice says I'd really like a new originally themed dark ride, but it's unlikely we'll get one, the chance of it eventually being another Julia Donaldson theme seems high.

To be honest, if it is another Donaldson IP then I am all for it. It reaffirms Chessington as a family park. Zog would suit this ride well!

I think it would be a terrible business move for Merlin to have more Donaldson IP. Unless they outright bought the IP, having so many attractions attached to a single owner, could mean they become really stuck, should anything sour with that relationship or license renewal costs increase.

Tomb Blaster has received a lot fo work over closed season. It now has new audio as well as a new storyline. The effects and animatronics inside look to have had a lot of work over closed season with them all seeming to work and it feels like a new ride, i won't lie.

Here's our new POV.



What do we make of the changes for 2020?

It's great to see many effects working and the new music by Nick Hutson's music incredible, I think Chessington struck gold by contracting him. It's also a lot darker now which is cool.

I went on Tomb Blaster back at the beginning of August and most of the targets weren't turned on and half of the effects were not working. I was so disappointed after hearing that the ride received a revamp.