April 15, 20169 yr comment_232425 Tomb blaster Is currently open And displaying a 5 minute Queue time! on chessie's site
April 16, 20169 yr comment_232489 Tomb blaster Is currently open And displaying a 5 minute Queue time! on chessie's siteI was happy, until I realised this often happens. They advertise alot of closed rides as 5 mins by mistake.Sent from my SM-G361F using Tapatalk
April 16, 20169 yr comment_232505 The ride has been running fine. I dont why everyone thinks that when a ride has a shutdown its the end of the world. Tomb blaster has had a few minor problems and a small amount of people blow it up to be a major incident. Get the facts right before posting anything !!!!!.
April 16, 20169 yr comment_232514 Did my first ride on Tombs 2.0 here's what stuck out. The queue line area and entrance are practically identical to what was there before, except the occasional redone up area and the new entrance logo which looks a bit too action packed. Indoor queue bit was probably the most improved. Improved lighting visual fresh ups, better audio and return of the bottomless pit which was great. Ride vehicles look and feel no different than they were last time except the addition of new score boards and gun system which feels considerably heavier than the old ones. Ride itself feels like a lost opportunity. The redone theming looks nice as does the occasional UV, but there's lots of problems. UV seems to expose more non ride elements such as making fire exits and the metal shell building more exposed as a result. The snake room is the only room that is as good as it was once. Whilst the audio quality is noticeably better, the lack of sound effects through theorise feels rather underwhelming to say the least and removes much soul from the attraction IMHO. The new targets look too clunky and feel like they were just slapped around randomly in a last minute job. Some effects are still broken and are more noticeable like the Boulder. Worth the 800k? Definitely not Aside from freshening some of the ride, it feels not just like a missed opportunity but has made the ride even worse. It's like a film series where the first film was outstanding, the second excellent, the third mixed but watchable and the latest one being poor. Abdab disapproves!
May 30, 20169 yr comment_235613 I only went on Tomb for the first time this season today. Hearing all the negative reviews, I desperately hoped it was a bunch of angry Merlin haters trying to take something out on them. But I didn't realise they could make it worse. But they managed to. The guns were completely silent. The 'pews' they emitted were just as big of a part of the previous version as the music was. Speaking of music, they managed to make it ear piercing and too loud. The lighting in some places was great, but it clearly illuminated the warehouse and made the sets so much smaller. I remember the days where I thought that the snake was impossibly large, and the Jackal was a giant. Of course, I've grown up since I've first been, but it just seems tiny now, probably a direct result of the lighting changes. The targets were large and clumsy, wires were everywhere, they'd stuck some onto the snake's eyes. Part of the fun of the older version was that the targets took some amount of skill to hit. I may have never got to try the Fifth Dimension, or Terror Tomb, but the old Tomb Blaster was a large part of my childhood. Now even that version has gone to the dogs.
May 31, 20169 yr comment_235621 I've only ever been in the exit of Tomb while waiting for my family and some of the music (some weird rumbling near the end, that plays just before every train returns to the station) made the floor shake
May 31, 20169 yr comment_235622 I agree, the music in some areas is a little loud, but aleast it working compared with last year. I rode it a couple of times and there were scenes that were completely silent. I was told that over the winter a new sound system was installed, so at least its going in the right direction, just a few tweaks.
May 31, 20169 yr comment_235625 The new upgraded sound system is arguably cheaper spec than the old one though (most 90s tech was solidly built to last and the new amps are basically average), and doesn't include any spot SFX, so what was the point? As for the loudness.. The music throughout the ride does deserve to be loud and bombastic, which the speakers in there are good spec for, but the audio mix now being played through them is of poor quality that it sounds horrible to the ear. Also many of the "Merlin haters" as you call them have worked in Merlin in various places for years, and who only wanted the best for that ride, so to see it ruined by a lazy H&S-focussed refurbishment ridiculously overhyped as a "rebirth of a classic ride" with cheap spec UV lights spilling out everywhere and a flawed gun system... yes of course it's worse than before, and in insult to the park's heritage with famous influential attractions like 5D and Terror Tomb that once put Chessington on the map.
May 31, 20169 yr comment_235627 I disagree, alot of the sound effects were removed when Terror Tomb became Tomb Blaster. The audio at this time was edited by an external contractor and has been used ever since. I agree that there has been a lot of miss opputuneties this time, but again the wrong people were involved in managing the project. It seems it was more of a H&S exerise are a ride refurbishment. This seems to be a common thing with all merlin projects at chessington. There are people in the park that really do care about making things right, but are always ignored by management that havent a clue about running a theme park.
May 31, 20169 yr comment_235630 19 minutes ago, insider9150 said: I disagree, alot of the sound effects were removed when Terror Tomb became Tomb Blaster. The audio at this time was edited by an external contractor and has been used ever since. The snake hissing spot FX (which were timed to when the snakes jumped up, originally along with timed lighting), axe spot FX (timed with the animations and lighting, unlike how it is now played continuously through the music), the mummy laughs, etc, they were all still in the ride as on 2015 and were removed this year, and not replaced. When I found them the sound stores, they were in perfectly good condition so I don't know why they were removed anyway. There were more timed spot FX removed after Terror Tomb (like a lot more mummy laughs and the explosions from the fire pit, for example) and I had hoped these would be returned, but no. The audio team at Tussauds Studios and some people from Farmer Studios oversaw the audio changes in the 2002 refurbishment, which was a bit hit and miss. This time it was left to Chessington's own technicians who may have had good intentions but were obviously rushed doing work around the rest of the park anyway. As you can hear it solved a few problems and made more problems. The whole project should have been more professional, especially the UV lighting which any professional lighting designer could tell you was awfully put together.
June 2, 20169 yr comment_235855 After riding the spruced up Tomb Blaster recently I was disappointed.. The new targets seemed to be hard to hit, and the guns felt painful to shoot a target. Yeah there was some things fixed and some redone sections which I like, but overall it was IMO kinda meh...
June 26, 20169 yr comment_237413 Went on Tomb Blaster for the first time today - does anyone know why you have to shoot each target like 90 times? Other than that I loved it.
June 27, 20169 yr comment_237471 23 hours ago, ChessingtonSam said: Went on Tomb Blaster for the first time today - does anyone know why you have to shoot each target like 90 times? Other than that I loved it. Because the new targets are crap. I used to love this ride but it's totally ruined for me now
June 27, 20169 yr comment_237472 Yeah, unfortunately the Tomb Blaster we once loved is no more. It can never compete with the Golden Nugget shooting ride.
June 27, 20169 yr comment_237474 46 minutes ago, Matt Creek said: Yeah, unfortunately the Tomb Blaster we once loved is no more. It can never compete with the Golden Nugget shooting ride. I genuinely prefer Golden Nugget to Tomb Blaster in its current state.
June 27, 20169 yr comment_237478 1 hour ago, Whatever said: Because the new targets are crap. I used to love this ride but it's totally ruined for me now According to my family it was only like that for me
June 28, 20169 yr comment_237516 I also found the targets to be be hard to shoot as well.. Plus I found the new blasters to be painful every time I would shoot.. The "spruce up" made the ride severely painful and unenjoyable IMO.
June 28, 20169 yr comment_237519 My sister and I actually found it much easier to shoot the targets and preferred it to what it was before.
June 29, 20169 yr comment_237527 I dont know about preferring it, but I definitely found it easier than the one one too
June 29, 20169 yr comment_237541 I've not ridden the new Blaster, but this facebook post from Chessinton Buzz a week or so ago says it all.. Quote We have to say, that may have been the worst we've ever seen Tomb Blaster. The rolling boulder was still broken, the jackal only began working once the entire train had moved past it, Axe Alley was entirely shut off and several targets had fallen off Anubis and were hanging from the set by their wire, looking rather comical. And other than the central snake and a small handful of targets, the finale scene was entirely broken too. How is it possible, just a few months after major referb, that the thing is in the worst state it's ever been? It's actually an achievement to be that incompetent really.
June 29, 20169 yr comment_237542 ^Is it really a major refurb though? I feel as though the whole thing has been completely blown out of proportion by those who reported it (it was originally Chessington Buzz actually I think?). Of course, things shouldn't be as bad as they are, regardless of the scale of any refurb. Or that bad at all, but I guess that's just Chessington.
June 29, 20169 yr comment_237544 3 minutes ago, BaronC. said: ^Is it really a major refurb though? Financially it was, even if much of that was not on the presentation. It has an entirely new shooting system and every scene has been amended. I'd call that quite major. Either way, spending any amount of money to make something worse cannot be right. Why spend to save the building if what's in the building is crap?
June 29, 20169 yr comment_237551 Good to see 2016 once proving how efficient our theme parks are run nowadays. Tombs falling apart doesn't surprise me at all considering how short sighted this refurbishment was in the first place and proves again Merlin only do it for money. They may as well just rebuild the whole ride now while they are at it.
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