Problem using menu tabs with contextual filters ( the % in the path breaks the menu tab)

I am working on a structure for a project which will have hundreds of view pages that I would like to display in parts using 10 +/- menu tabs. I have been able to create a test view (/section/chapter) using specific path terms, and a separate tabs view (/section/chapter/tabs) with pages to express each tab on the test view. When I go to the test view page (/section/chapter) the various tabs are shown. However, when I add contexual filters to the tab view and change the page paths to use %1 (/section/%1/TabPageName), the tabs will no longer show on the test page(/section/chapter). The filters are using a taxonomy term (I have configured the validator for terms as ID with dashes for spaces). I am confident that the filter is correctly configured because the correct results show up in the 'Preview'. My objective of providing a single view to handle the tabs seems like a 'cleaner' way to handle the requirement, but I am unable to figure out why it doesn't work. I fear that providing separate tab definition pages in every view will make any future modifications much harder and performance slower.

Has anyone had this problem or successfully used contexual filters with menu tabs?

A clarification please: I am not certain I understand something correctly regarding contextual filters. I am assuming that the filter is extracting the %1 value from the URL using the pattern identified in the path for the view page. So in my example above, the filter is looking at the view page path /section/%1/TabPageName and extracting the %1 variable as the 'chapter' value from the URL. The contexual filter then limits the view to only the specific chapter.