Theme Parks : Sunday in the Parks With Calendar : Magic Mountain: Baby, It’s Toasty Outside

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:

There may be no record that Buster Poindexter ever visited Six Flags Magic Mountain, but it’s a cinch his biggest hit could be adopted as the park’s theme song. Magic Mountain, cradled in arid Valencia about an hour northeast of L.A. Civic Center, is hot, hot, hot.

It was particularly withering one Sunday when the temperature climbed to a desertlike 90 degrees--a harbinger of arid, blistering summer days ahead.

To its credit, the management of the 260-acre amusement center has imported a veritable forest over the past couple decades, artificially offering some shade. There are also lean-tos and all manner of shade-shelters erected outside the more popular rides so patrons will not fry, die or sue due to heat prostration while they wait an hour or more for a 3-minute thrill ride.

One of the newer and more innovative anti-boredom systems for those sweating minions waiting in line is a clever series of strategically placed TV monitors that offer music videos and advertisements for assorted goings-on in the park. As moms, dads and kids shuffle through, they can watch the same TV they left at home in order to get out in the world and have fun in the great outdoors.

Magic Mountain, which calls itself “the park that cares about you,” makes a tradition of opening a blockbuster ride each year. The most recent additions: a kind of high-rise whirlybird called Condor and a sort of high-speed ski lift without the skis, Ninja. (The latter premiered last summer.)

Condor, which opened late last year, had no line at all at high noon. Maybe that’s because it’s on the south side of the park where there are few trees and less shade. Or maybe it’s the ride itself, which consists of about 2 minutes of twirling at the top of a 112-foot pole--leaving even the healthiest adult nauseous.

The park’s chief attraction remains Colossus: the biggest and--since the razing of Long Beach’s Cyclone Racer more than 20 years ago--most frightening roller coaster on the West Coast. Riders have been known to throw up, shriek in abject horror and shake for a full 15 minutes after a first trip around the monster’s tracks. There are at least two spots where it appears that the entire Lakers basketball team could be decapitated if they were to stand up from their seats. If a true thrill seeker is prepared to spend an hour in line, there’s no better ride in the park.

Runners-up include Z-Force (riders hang upside down from a swinging gondola in such a manner that a sheer drop of about four stories to the pavement below seems like a certainty) and Roaring Rapids, which had the longest line (81 minutes) in the park. The great thing about this artificial white-water river raft trip is that riders get wet. Or, rather, drenched. On a toaster-oven Sunday when the lines just to buy a $1.85 ice cream cone are 10 minutes long, a good soaking in Roaring Rapids will keep a Magic Mountaineer cool for two hours--longer if pants or skirt are made of denim.

(Footnote to thrill-ride fans: Shock Wave, the stand-up roller coaster that once ranked as the park’s baaaadest ride, is no longer here. “I think we moved it to our park in Georgia,” said a park employee. Bummer!)

The newest attraction, opening next Sunday, also promises to be wet. Though it was still under construction during this reporter’s visit, Tidal Wave had the look of a damp roller coaster. Park-ride designers say the idea is to drop patrons down a 98-foot chute into a 20-foot high wall of water--something like experiencing a prefab flash flood.

Though the park obviously caters to adolescent adrenaline, teen-agers with lots of disposable income are not the only ones who can happily saute on a summer’s day at Magic Mountain. There are the obligatory dolphin shows, fireworks displays and life-sized renditions of Warner Bros. cartoon characters wandering around the park like visions from a nightmare. Also, Tweety, Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig, among others, put on a stage show near Bugs Bunny World, which houses mini-thrill rides for the stroller set.