Terror Tomb
| Terror Tomb | |||||||||||||||
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| General statistics | |||||||||||||||
| Attraction type | Dark ride | ||||||||||||||
| Manufacturer | Mack Rides | ||||||||||||||
| Theme | Ancient Egypt | ||||||||||||||
| Capacity | 1,200 riders per hour | ||||||||||||||
| Vehicles | 5 | ||||||||||||||
| Rows | 24 | ||||||||||||||
| Riders per row | 3 | ||||||||||||||
| Duration | 7 minutes | ||||||||||||||
Terror Tomb (later renamed Forbidden Tomb) was a dark ride attraction at Chessington World of Adventures themed around a tomb robber named Abdab. The ride opened in 1994 along with the Forbidden Kingdom area. All music was composed by Graham Smart, including the now infamous hard rock song featured in the ride's finale.
Ride Information
The ride was created as a replacement for the 5th Dimension, occupying the same infrastructure and show building. The ride had an Ancient Egyptian themed and mixed dark humour with a mock horror storyline. The ride lasted seven years before closing in 2001, as it was considered at odds with Chessington new family target audience. All of the ride's sets were recycled for the present day Tomb Blaster, with the exception of the Abdab animatronics.
The experience began as guests navigated a themed queue courtyard with rope bridges and a waterfall. They would then enter the Tomb building and travel through a souk with market stalls and Persian rugs. Guests would walk past a tour guide's office and the ride's antagonist Abdab, asleep in a chair with a map of the tomb resting on his lap. Newspaper cuttings would tell of the emerald hidden within. Guests would ascend into the dimly lit loading area and begin their journey into the darkness.
In a prologue scene, Abdab cursed the riders for their intrusion into the tomb and warned that the emerald within belonged to him. The train would ascend a ramp where a boulder would roll overhead, in an allusion to Raiders of The Lost Ark. At the top, the carriages would rotate as they circled a pit filled with snakes. Abdab was seen pulling on a rope to release a more snakes into the pit, cackling insanely and warning the intruders that this was only the beginning of their ordeal. As the train travelled down a corridor past stone skull carving, snakes would appear randomly and unexpectedly to scare riders.
The train would then stop in the first of two 'show scenes' where the action would take place like a show. Abdab appeared threatening to release the surrounding spike booby traps, but instead activated a secret revolving door and became trapped behind a wall. A hidden scene illuminated to show Abdab apparently finding the emerald in a stone sarcophagus, only to fall inside and get captured by a mummified ghoul holding the real jewel in its hand.
The ride would then continue as riders passed a Jackal in a cage, a skeleton being lowered into a pool of lava and some axe throwing mummies.
In a climactic scene, Abdab would cling to a disintegrating obelisk as he attempted to grab the emerald, now worn on a ring on the paw of a giant Anubis statue. Riders would then travel through a revolving tunnel and into the finale scene.
Here, the ride paused again as a hard rock song would play performed by a grotesque mummified electric guitarist and three female mummy vocalists. Abdab would be strapped in an iron maiden in the middle of the scene as the punishing hard rock scene played out. As the song ended, Abdab was sealed inside the iron maiden as the glowing emerald was revealed embedded on other side of the spiked lid.
The trains would leave the scene before riders encountered some screaming mummies which leapt out from the darkness for one final scare.
In an epilogue scene, Abdab appeared as a maniacal ghoul to torment riders while clutching the jewel, boasting it was his at last. Here, some flying ghoul heads would swoop down on the riders before the train entered the offload bay.
See Also
- Chessington World of Adventures Resort
- The 5th Dimension
- Tomb Blaster
External links
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