Theme Parks Develop Elaborate New Lures for Summer Visitors : Tourism: Several attractions will be unveiled, including the Fantasmic! show at Disneyland, an Indian village at Knott’s and ‘The Abyss’ at Wild Rivers.

Last year, many Southern California theme parks took the road less expensive to boost attendance. They added shows and parades, which are less costly than building new rides or major attractions.

This year, the parks are returning to more elaborate summer plans:

DISNEYLAND--The Anaheim theme park is heavily promoting its Fantasmic! show, a riverfront extravaganza in Frontierland that will feature a mixture of live performers and special effects.

The importance of the project accelerated along with the cost. The price reportedly rose to $30 million, double original estimates, leading to the nightly show being considered a full-scale attraction. Workers struggled for months to rig the special effects for the show, a task that included draining the lake around Tom Sawyer’s Island.

Not all visitors are likely to see it on a given day, however. About 18,000 onlookers can be packed into three shows a night, far below the park’s reported maximum capacity of about 75,000 visitors. Disneyland officials say, however, that they are planning to hold other special events simultaneously, such as the electrical parade down Main Street, to relieve some of the pressure to see Fantasmic!

The show itself will involve Mickey Mouse fighting back demons and villains from the various Disney movies made over the years. Lasers and fire will spew from the water and live performers will swing from the rigging of the Columbia sailing ship. The highlight will be a fancy new system in which images are projected on pillars of mist.

KNOTT’S BERRY FARM--Taking a clue from the recent success of the film “Dances With Wolves,” Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park is opening its own Indian village in June which will display the crafts, foods and customs of tribes from four regions of the nation.

The $2-million project is intended not only as a draw for tourists, but also to benefit the park’s educational programs for local students. About 50 American Indians are being hired to staff “Indian Trails,” including specialists in such exotic crafts as canoe carving.

For summer, Knott’s will be offering five new shows themed around the Wild West.

The park is also building the Thomas A. Edison Inventors Workshop, a project in conjunction with Southern California Edison, in which children will be able to try any of 10 different experiments demonstrating electricity. It opens next month.

SIX FLAGS MAGIC MOUNTAIN--For the third year in a row, Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia is introducing a new roller coaster. This time, it’s a $4-million “hairpin drop” coaster that wrenches passengers through the tight twists and spirals at three times the force of gravity.

Magic Mountain has prided itself on being a thrill-ride haven. With Flashback, the park will have eight roller coasters.

UNIVERSAL STUDIOS--The Universal City movie lot will open “Backdraft,” a special effects attraction featuring scenes from the 1991 movie about firefighters.

Inside a large sound stage, Backdraft will be a choreographed inferno that will create a firestorm with ruptured fuel lines and melting metal. The show, which will seemingly trap visitors in the firestorm, will be performed as many as 15 times an hour.

The studio also will unveil two new stage shows featuring the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon characters and a 15-minute “Beetlejuice Graveyard Revue,” a rock ‘n roll show for kids. Both debut Saturday.

SEA WORLD--The San Diego aquatic theme park will add Shark Encounter, an expansion of a previously unnamed exhibit. The new attraction will feature more than 50 sharks--what Sea World says will be the largest collection in the world--in a 680,000-gallon tank, which is enough to fill about 34,000 bathtubs. Spectators will see the sharks by riding on a moving walkway through a glass-enclosed tunnel.

The park also is adding “ShamuVision,” , a 300-square-foot video screen for Shamu Stadium that will show underwater shots, instant replays and prerecorded videotapes of marine life in the wild. They also will debut Wings of the World, an exhibition of more than 50 types of birds.

WILD RIVERS--The Laguna Hills water park is building “The Abyss,” its first major new attraction in several years. It will feature a 650-foot-long darkened tube that loops and twists down from its seven-story “mountain.”

“We got the idea of kind of a dark, bottomless pit,” said Debra Hutton, a spokeswoman for Wild Rivers. “It’s real fast, real long and real dark.” The $350,000 ride, to open in May, is wide enough so three people can go down at the same time.

The park also is heating its quarter-mile “lazy river” to a more comfortable temperature for guests.

Wild Rivers--where nearly 90% of its nearly 400,000 annual visitors are from local residents--could benefit from the economic slowdown because more people will opt to stay near home rather than take long trips, Hutton said.

“The trend is that people are staying closer to home, so hopefully they will come here,” Hutton said. “Still, we can add attractions till the cows come home, but if we don’t have a hot summer . . . “

RAGING WATERS--The competing water park will add a six-person raft ride with a “huge, gigantic flume,” said park spokesman Ken Kowalski. The attraction, which will open in early May, cost more than $1 million, he said.

Like Wild Rivers, Raging Waters in San Dimas plans to try to lure local residents with special promotions. Attendance at the park--more than 500,000 a year--was up 10% in 1991, he said.