Theme Parks : Sunday in the Parks With Calendar : Universal Studios: Tinseltown’s Tricks

Welcome to Sunday in the Parks with Calendar--the Sequel. And please fasten your seat belts.

For our second annual survey of Southern California’s major theme parks, our intrepid reporters visited the parks on a recent Sunday, unannounced. Accompanied by family or a friend, they bought tickets, stood in lines, sampled the park’s rides and menus and withered in the heat.

Afterward, they put in calls to the various park publicists for assistance in compiling our comparison chart. (Some of those publicists would have preferred that we attend their parks during special “media days”--when the parks operate without a glitch and are especially clean and when we might have been wooed with “cuts” in line, as well as special edibles.)

It’s no surprise that Sundays in the park have changed since the serene turn-of-the-century depiction “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of the Grande Jatte,” by French artist Georges Seurat, (the inspiration for our illustrations). In fact, Sundays keep on changing, as the parks continue in their mania to always be one step/ride/attraction ahead of the competition. So how do they measure up? Read on:

It’s so wickedly Hollywood of the Universal Studios Tour to have its newest attraction, “Earthquake: the Big One,” rock a San Francisco setting.

Measuring 8.3 on the Richter scale, this baby lets loose floods, fires, a train wreck (look out--that BART car’s going to crash!) and assorted other devastations.

Like the Irwin Allen “disaster pictures” that inspired it, it’s tasteless and crass--and thoroughly entertaining! Too bad the trams don’t go through this attraction twice.

Not that you’d want to see a rerun of every attraction. A little of this park goes a long way.

For instance, how many times can you sit through a demonstration of special effects wizardry--narrated by Robert Wagner on an overhead screen? You’d rather see the movies he’s talking about.

But then, this tour is an homage to the movies--laced with Hollywood huckstering. (Watch how Frankenstein casually puts his arm around your shoulders. The better for the park photographer to snap you--and charge you $4.50 for the resulting snapshot.)

As you’d expect, in a town in which every waiter/waitress seems to be an unemployed actor/actress, the tour guides are “on.” (Hey, you never know when some big Hollywood talent scout’s going to be riding that tram, right?) They’re also very funny and lively and good at throwing out bits of show-biz trivia.

“Dick Tracy”--currently filming at the lot--stars “just about anybody who’s ever been friends with Warren Beatty,” quipped one guide. Then there was the guide who showed a “Miami Vice” sequence without the sound. After asking the audience what’s missing, he cracked, “It wouldn’t be talent, would it?”

The way the park is set up, when you buy your tickets you are given a time to show up for your tram. There might be several hours or so to wait--the better to filter visitors into the Entertainment Center where the live-action shows are under way.

The trick to doing this park: See as many shows as you can before boarding the tram (unless you luck out and get on an early tram). Then, after the tram tour ends, you don’t have to spend so much time darting from show to show.

No matter that “Miami Vice” has seen better days on the tube. As an “Action Spectacular,” it delivers. Some 50 high-tech stunts--accompanied by lots of gunplay and explosions--are carried out by “Crocket” (wearing pastels and the all-important sunglasses) and “Tubbs” and a host of bad guys. (No crime is mentioned--but we had them pegged for drug runners.)

Alongside “Miami Vice,” the Western Stunt Show is on the quaint side.

Then again, these shows are largely a matter of taste. Animal lovers may thrill to the exploits of Rio the Black Cat (whose credits include a Madonna video) and Grimley the Vulture, while Trekkies will undoubtedly trek to the diverting “Star Trek Adventure,” which finds about 30 members of the (vast) audience getting to try their hand at inter-acting with Spock, Kirk and assorted special effects. (The results are played back at show’s end.)

Our “critics” (ages 13 and 10) gave high marks to the Conan laser/pyrotechnics/special effects show. (And they wanted to go back into “Miami Vice.”)

The tour even provides some “educational” footnotes.

It was at the Western-themed area known as Six Points--where six streets converge--that filming first took place on the lot in 1915. Back in those days of silent films, they sometimes shot as many as a half-dozen movies here at the same time.

And there’s an old Eastern European area (read: Transylvania) where filming took place on “Frankenstein.”

While talking legends: There may not be many attractions inspired by them (exceptions include the confrontation with King Kong), but you can’t escape their memory. The park’s many gift/souvenir shops won’t let you.

But then, that’s Hollywood.