Hands-On Entertainment : * Families can enjoy boats, mazes, Skid Cars--and they all require active participation.

The Anaheim Family Fun Center isn’t just fun, it’s reassuring. In the county that invented the theme park, in the same city that contains Disneyland, there’s still a place for the little guy with a few good gimmicks.

Perhaps the appeal of the place has to do with the fact that the center offers do-it-yourself fun. Unlike the behemoth parks, where all too often visitors are simply strapped into cars or pods or boats or rockets and are expected to sit passively and be dazzled by the high-tech show going on around them, the attractions at the Family Fun Center oblige you to perform, to react. To do something.

Take one of the newer attractions, for instance: the Battle Boats. Installed two years ago, they offer four elements that are the answer to many kids’ dreams: water, noise, individual control and firepower.

It works like this: Two people crawl into motorized boats that look like floating tanks and venture out into a small lagoon (surrounded by netting to catch errant shots) to do battle with other boats. The driver in the lower turret and the gunner in the upper turret both have guns that shoot rubber balls at other boats with a loud cough of compressed air. A hit automatically immobilizes either gunner or driver for a few seconds.

Spectators can buy a bucket of balls and shoot, too, from the other side of the netting. They can score hits on boats or on various other targets that will cause geysers of water to shoot into the air as if a bomb or depth charge had exploded in the water.

The price for all this mayhem is $3.75, plus the cost of ammunition (a small bucket for $1 and a “Rambo-sized” bucket for $3).

The psychological opposite of the Battle Boats is likely the Maze Craze ($4), the center’s newest attraction. Installed in December, it’s not for the easily frustrated.

From above (there are a series of elevated observation platforms where your friends can snicker at you as you stumble ignorantly along), the maze looks like a three-dimensional version of any maze puzzle one might see in an edition of Highlights for Children: simply a set of linked partitions. But, said center manager Ray Thomas, the average time in the maze is about an hour, and one man, said Thomas, wandered in there for three hours.

“He was fairly frustrated,” said Thomas.

The idea is not simply to get from the start to the finish, although that’s hard enough. During your odyssey you’re also obliged to find and record a series of numbers and letters hidden in the maze. By the by, you’re timed. Don’t go in if you’re pressed. And don’t think that you can return once a week, eventually memorize the maze and beat it. It’s changed monthly.

You’ll also find a couple of old friends with slightly different faces. Everybody’s seen bumper cars, which are in the pure-fun hall of fame, but what happens if you add the element of water?

You get the Bumper Boats ($1.25 for children under 44 inches and $3.25 for adults), which look like nothing more than a kind of motorized inner tube. The motor, however, is a mere 2.5 horsepower--which won’t build up enough of a head of steam to cause more than a gentle thump against another boat. Steering is fun, though, and Thomas said it’s particularly popular on hot summer days.

The second chestnut in the amusement lineup is the Go-Kart track ($3.75), which remains the most popular attraction at the center, Thomas said.

However, it has a smaller brother nearby--the Skid Cars ($3)--that offers an intriguing compensation for its lack of size: the possibility of several spin-outs. The curved ends of the oval track are smooth and are coated with a material to make them particularly slippery. And the tires on the karts are bald. The combination allows the drivers to make a delightful choice: slow down and negotiate the curves cleanly or keep the pedal to the metal and fishtail to their heart’s content.

Easily the most kinetic of the activities the center offers are found at the outdoor roller skating rink and the batting cages. The rink offers lessons and skate rentals (you can also bring your own) and baseballs can be attacked at the cages at speeds from 40 to 70 m.p.h. There’s also a machine that tosses softballs slow-pitch style. Helmets are required, and bats and helmets are available at the center.

And if it all gets to be too much outdoors, you can always retreat indoors to the game arcade, which is air conditioned but offers all the peace and quiet of a Vegas casino with all the slot machines paying off at once. In other words, every kid’s dream room.

You don’t have to be a kid, though. A healthy aversion to passivity will do fine.

The Anaheim Family Fun Center is at 1041 N. Shepard St. (near the Kraemer Boulevard exit of the 91 Freeway) and is open from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and from 9 a.m. to midnight Friday and Saturday.

For information, batting cage reservation and group sales, call (714) 630-6090.