JUST THEIR SIZE : Finally, an Amusement Park That Scales Its Fun in Proportion to Its Adventurers

Theme parks.

If you’re a parent, the words alone can make you feel lightheaded.

Unless you’re richer than Michael Eisner and more centered than Mother Teresa, being a veteran of big theme park outings with the family means you’ve probably groused about lightened pocketbooks and sore feet. Allan Ansdell Jr. says he has, and he and his family are betting $4 million that locals would welcome a manageable alternative to the “we’re-spending-bundle-on-this-so-you- dang-well-better-enjoy-it” marathons parents know so well.

On Saturday, Ansdell will open Adventure City in Stanton, a pocket-size entertainment center billed as “The Little Theme Park Just for Kids.” Geared to children ages 2 to 12, the two-acre park will offer 11 rides and attractions, a snack shop, a game and party area and live entertainment, as well as programs and displays designed to educate children about topics ranging from transportation to crime prevention.

Adventure City is next door to Hobby City, six acres of hobby-oriented shops that was started in 1955 by Ansdell’s maternal grandparents, Jay and Brea DeArmond.

Hobby City remains a family business. Ansdell’s grandfather died in 1982, but his grandmother still operates the center’s doll museum. He and his wife, Michelle, along with his parents, siblings and various in-laws, also own and operate shops in the complex, which include everything from an antique gun dealer to a Cabbage Patch Kids shop where employees dress as nurses and give free checkups to visiting children’s dolls.

Since its inception in 1990, Adventure City has been a family project as well. Allan Jr. is the park’s president; his mom, Yvonne, and Michelle are heavily involved on the creative side, and his dad, Allan Sr., handles most of the finances.

His 82-year-old grandmother (“She’s the head honcho,” says Allan Jr., laughing) is consulted at their daily family meetings, along with an assortment of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. In June, general manager Kevin Lutz, a former operations manager for a Cleveland-area theme park, was brought in to steer Adventure City’s day-to-day operations.

As opening day nears, the family, Lutz and their small administrative staff typically begin work before sunrise and end well past nightfall. Locals and Hobby City regulars stop by daily to check on the park’s progress and snap pictures.

Although they will operate independently, Hobby City and Adventure City share a common goal, said Yvonne Ansdell.

Hobby City “was never intended to be a mega-sophisticated center,” she explained as she gave a visitor a tour of the two complexes on a recent sweltering afternoon. “We just wanted a homey kind of place where people can come and find a hobby, and hopefully spend some time together as a family.”

In fact, she added, that family-friendly environment was what started the Ansdells thinking about the theme park project in the first place.

“We used to have a miniature train that ran around the grounds here, and the kids would ride that little train over and over again,” she recalled. “Almost every time Allan (Jr.) would drive it, people would tell him, ‘You know, this is so fun, you ought to get some more rides in here.’

“Now look at us,” she said, standing at Adventure City’s main entrance and gesturing to the crews of workmen scattered across the park. “I guess they were on to something.”

Adventure City will probably never replace Knott’s Berry Farm, Disneyland or Magic Mountain as a vacation destination, said Allan Jr., but it will fill a need for local residents that he believes hasn’t been adequately addressed.

“We’re not competing with (the big theme parks),” he said. “But with their multimillion-dollar rides and shows, their admission prices are pretty high, so most people generally don’t go to them more than once or twice a year. That expense is a problem especially when you have little kids, because they conk out quicker. If you’re paying a big price, you feel like you have to put in a whole day, and everybody ends up dragging.

“Here, it’s more affordable (admission, including unlimited rides, will be $9.95; free for under age 2), so you don’t have to take out a loan every time your kids want to go to a theme park. And it will be smaller and less crowded, so you can do the whole thing in a few hours at a more relaxed pace.”

Even though most of the area’s major theme parks have places designed for young children, Allan Jr. maintains that Adventure City will offer something they don’t--namely, an environment that can be enjoyed simultaneously by children and adults.

“I used to take my nephews to the kiddie sections at those parks, and I found that I wasn’t allowed to go on the rides with them, and they were too young to go on the big roller coaster kinds of rides with me,” he recalled. “I started thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a place where you wouldn’t have to pay the high price and you could both have fun?’ ”

To that end, almost all of the rides that the Ansdells have selected were built to accommodate children and adults. They include the Adventure City Bus, which rotates at the end of a larger weighted arm, similar to the Camp Bus ride at Knott’s Camp Snoopy; a 1946 Allan Herschell carousel with 20 full-size horses that Allan Jr. and Yvonne found in a Philadelphia park; the six-car Giggles Wheel of Fun Ferris wheel; a Balloon Race ride that simulates hot-air ballooning and the Barnstormers miniature plane ride.

Although it is about the same size as some of the small “family fun centers” scattered around the county, the theme of the new park will be more in line with Disneyland’s Toon Town. The site was built to resemble a small city, with the rides and attractions designed to work together to create the look and atmosphere of a small town in a children’s book.

Visitors enter the park through a town square with brightly colored facades painted to resemble storefronts. Nearby is the “grocery warehouse,” through which visitors cruise on scaled-down police cars and fire trucks on the 9-1-1 ride. Across the way, the Adventure City Airport, complete with tower, serves as a waiting area for the plane and balloon rides. There’s also a city train station where visitors board the miniature train relocated from Hobby City and the Crank & Roll kid-powered trains.

And, just to keep you grounded in reality, Adventure City also has its own traffic jam. The Kids’ Coaster offers “bumper-to-bumper freeway traffic” on a track that winds over and around a faux rock tunnel, waterfall and a spreading 75-year-old pepper tree. (This ride is scheduled to be installed this week and may not be operational by opening weekend.)

In many of the waiting areas, hands-on exhibits and signage have been integrated to teach children such topics as personal safety, aviation and, of course, hobbies. Modified firemen’s turnouts (the coats, hats and boots used in firefighting) and a mock fire pole wait in the miniature fire and police department next to the 9-1-1 ride.

A changing display of toy train collections will be housed in the depot, and an aviation expert from John Wayne Airport helped put together a display on aircraft history and facts for the Adventure City airport.

On weekends, representatives from local police and fire departments will give demonstrations in an outdoor special events area, and a theater will host daily puppet shows. Plans are in the works to bring in children’s performers from the area as well.

Even the park’s hiring policy reflects the efforts to create the feeling of a real community, said Yvonne Ansdell. By opening, the park will employ some 115 people of various ethnic groups, who will range in age from 18 to 80. Most of them will be in the 30- to 50-plus range.

Rick Bastrup of R&R; Creative Amusement Designs Inc., the Anaheim firm that is the primary architectural consultant on the project, said the park’s “total community” flavor will be its saving grace.

“I don’t think I’ve seen this done anywhere else in the country,” said Bastrup. “The idea of building a city that involves parents and kids together, and that is partially a teaching environment, is really what’s going to set them apart from the competition. And the competition in this business is stiff.”

To gather ideas for their project, Allan Jr. and Yvonne set out in the summer of 1990 on a national tour of amusement parks of all sizes, a journey that would continue on and off for nearly three years. Encouraged by the results of a feasibility study, family members continued their research until last fall, when they brought their ideas to Bastrup and his partner Richard Ferrin, whose company has worked on projects for Magic Mountain, Six Flags Over Texas, Wild Rivers and Knott’s Berry Farm.

“Basically, they had done all their homework and knew what they wanted,” Bastrup said. “They had their ideas in place, they handled the purchase of the rides, and we helped them bring it together and brought in all the whip cream topping (like) the music, the sound effects and the building designs.”

Obviously, it takes a lot more than good ideas and intentions to build even a small park; it also takes lots and lots of money.

Yvonne and Allan Ansdell Sr. sold their waterfront home in Seal Beach and put in nearly $1 million of their own money. (“Make sure you tell people we’re tapped out,” Allan Sr. said with a rueful grin. “There’s no more where that came from.”)

For the rest of the funding, Allan Sr. went first to the area’s major banks. Although many of them showed initial interest, they turned down their requests because of the family’s lack of experience as theme park operators.

“They looked at the risk factor and said, ‘How do you know how to run a theme park?’ ” he recalled. “To me, business is business. It doesn’t really matter if it’s a theme park or selling pianos, if you hire the right people, give customers what they want and make it affordable, it’s going to work. But (the major banks) had a hard time with that.”

Ultimately, it was the small community banks and ITT’s Commercial/Financial division that came through for them, said Allan Sr. And in January, they approached the Stanton Redevelopment Agency and received a 10-year, fixed-rate loan of $500,000. In addition to paying off the loan, Adventure City’s management had to guarantee the park would generate $50,000 per year in sales tax revenue for the next 20 years.

According to Stanton City Manager Greg Hulsizer, the City Council saw the Adventure City project as “clean, family-oriented commerce . . . that is in sync with the council’s goal for the community.” Stanton is one of the county’s smallest cities, with a population of 32,000 and a median household income of $33,000 according to 1990 census figures.

Although he doesn’t expect his city to become another Anaheim or Buena Park, given the new park’s proximity to attractions such as Disneyland, Knott’s and the beach, Hulsizer says the project will position Stanton more prominently on the county’s entertainment map. And that’s just fine with the folks at the county’s two largest amusement parks.

Spokesmen for Knott’s and Disneyland said they weren’t concerned about the much smaller Adventure City pulling any prospective visitors from their gates.

“I think most travelers consider going to Disneyland first, but any park that brings more visitors down to this area is going to benefit all of us,” said Disneyland’s John McClintock.

Bob Ochsner of Knott’s agrees. “I think the only impact that could come from this is positive,” he said. “The proximity (Adventure City is about three miles south of Knott’s, five miles west of Disney) will probably increase the desirability of this part of the county to visitors.

“Besides, it’s definite proof that the days of the family-owned theme park are not over.”

* What: Adventure City, “The Little Theme Park Just for Kids.”

* When: Opens to the public Saturday, Aug. 20. Summer hours are 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.

* Where: 10120 S. Beach Blvd., Stanton.

* Whereabouts: From the Garden Grove (22) Freeway, exit at Beach Boulevard and drive north. The park fronts Beach between Ball Road and Cerritos Avenue.

* Wherewithal: $9.95 for children and adults; children under 2 are free.

* Where to call: (714) 827-7469 or (714) 236-9300.

MORE KID STUFF IN MISSION VIEJO: ‘LITTLE RED AND THE HOODS’

Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 20 and 21 (plus Aug. 27 and 28) at Children’s Theatre Village, 23891 Via Fabricante, the Paper Bag Players invite children to bring a lunch and chat with actors before the show. House opens at 11:30 a.m.; performance is at 12:30 p.m. $5. (714) 588-8857.

IN ANAHEIM: PAPER BAG SCULPTING

Ages 7 to 12 create paper sculptures today, Aug. 18, at 3 p.m. at Anaheim Museum. The children’s gallery also hosts “Foreign Places, Friendly Faces,” exhibiting games, costumes and music from around the world. Gallery admission: $1.50. (714) 778-3301.

IN FULLERTON: INSIDE THE THEATER

On Saturday, Aug. 20, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. the Muckenthaler Cultural Center hosts a theater-oriented program that includes mask-making and makeup sessions and guided tours of the “Re-Created Worlds: The Collaborative Vision of Stage Design” exhibit. Free. (714) 738-6595.

A Walk in the Parks

Here’s a look at how Adventure City stacks up against its two largest Orange County competitors, Knott’s Berry Farm and Disneyland.

ADVENTURE CITY

Motto: “The Little Theme Park Just for Kids”

Opens to the public: Aug. 20, 1994

Guests to date: N/A

Rides and attractions: 11

Size: Two acres

Admission: $9.95; children under 2 get in free

Parking: Three-acre lot; free

Picnic area: Outside main gate

Concessions: One snack stand plus food carts

KNOTT’S BERRY FARM

Motto: “The Friendliest Place in the West”

Opened to the public: June, 1940

Guests to date: Approximately 150 million

Rides and attractions: 55

Size: 150 acres (includes park, Independence Hall and grounds, California Marketplace and parking lot)

Admission: $28.50 for adults; $18.50 for children 11 and under and seniors; children under 3 get in free.

Parking: $5

Picnic area: Outside main gate, lockers available

Concessions: Multiple

DISNEYLAND

Motto: “The Happiest Place on Earth”

Opened to the public: July, 1955

Guests to date: Approximately 350 million

Rides and attractions: 65

Size: 90 acres

Admission: $31 for adults; $25 for kids 11 and under and seniors; children under 3 get in free

Parking: $5

Picnic area: Outside main gate, lockers available

Concessions: Multiple

Source: Adventure City, Knott’s Berry Farm and Disneyland public relations departments