Six Flags Plunging Into Water Attraction : Theme parks: In June, Magic Mountain will open Hurricane Harbor, a huge water-ride project. Parent firm hopes for more visitors, longer stays.

After January’s heavy rains let up, work crews at Six Flags Magic Mountain had to siphon 1.4 million gallons of water off a 14-acre construction site at the theme park. But this spring, workers will pump 1.5 million gallons of water right back onto the same spot.

By then, if all goes according to Six Flags’ plan, the construction area will be transformed into one of the largest water parks in the country, where thousands of people every day will pay up to $20 apiece to float in a 480,000-gallon wave pool, raft along winding rivers, and race down 400-foot water slides.

Adding new attractions is a way of life for amusement parks, which commonly spend millions every year to build new roller-coasters and other rides to keep attendance from slipping. But in Valencia, Six Flags has upped the ante with plans for a completely new park called Hurricane Harbor, scheduled to open in early June, and will charge a separate admission from its 23-year-old amusement park neighbor, Magic Mountain.

Six Flags officials hope that having a second park will entice guests to stay longer, lure family vacationers away from Disneyland, Universal Studios and other Southern California competitors, and attract visitors from greater distances. Traditionally, Magic Mountain has drawn about 80% of its business from between Fresno and San Diego, but now “it’s the whole western United States we’re trying to push to Magic Mountain,” said Bob Pittman, chief executive of Six Flags Theme Parks Inc., a division of New York-based Time Warner Inc.

Company officials put the price tag of Hurricane Harbor at about $35 million, making it the costliest expansion of the Valencia park since it opened. That’s a significant gamble, considering that the local tourism industry is still limping after the recession, riots and other setbacks drove millions of visitors away in recent years. According to the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau, the number of tourists visiting Los Angeles County dropped from a high of 25.2 million in 1989 to 20.9 million in 1992, and has been inching back slowly ever since.

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But industry analysts say Hurricane Harbor is a safe bet because water parks have become increasingly popular over the past 10 years, and the new park’s nearest competitors are hours away in San Dimas and Irvine. “The competition isn’t there,” said Deborah Enders, a theme park analyst in Encino. “It’s a pretty sound move for Six Flags.”

Six Flags was emboldened to go ahead with the project after Magic Mountain set an attendance record last year with 3.5 million guests, maintaining its position as the fourth-most-popular theme park in Southern California, according to Amusement Business magazine. Pittman said he expects Hurricane Harbor to flourish because the Southern California economy is rebounding, he believes, and the hot, dry Valencia climate is perfect for a water park.

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The 41-year-old Pittman, who was MTV’s head of programming in the early 1980s, is also counting on demographics. Baby-boomers--the 78 million Americans born in the two decades following World War II--now have children and teen-agers of their own, Pittman said, and they are increasingly looking for prepackaged family entertainment that involves little planning and offers big thrills.

When complete, Hurricane Harbor is supposed to have the look and feel of a storm-ravaged island, with a smoke-spewing volcano at the park’s center. Paths and waterways will be lined with dense tropical foliage and replicas of Tiki and Easter Island statues. Visitors will enter through a corridor of shops and restaurants and cross a winding river. Once inside, they will choose from more than a dozen attractions, including three water-slide towers stretching up to 65 feet in the air.

This summer, the water park will employ about 300 seasonal workers, bringing total summer employment at both parks to about 3,300, officials said.

During the past three years, Time Warner has pumped nearly $40 million into Magic Mountain, officials said, upgrading the park’s appearance and tying attractions to such Warner Bros. cartoon characters as Yosemite Sam and Tweety Bird. Last year, Magic Mountain unveiled the Gotham City Backlot, where visitors wander past a series of gritty, urban sights and sounds to approach the park’s most popular ride, the Batman roller-coaster.

Magic Mountain has added four roller-coasters since 1990, but attendance growth was meager until the Batman ride helped draw an additional 200,000 guests last year, company officials said, bringing the year’s total to 3.5 million. The park still trailed Southern California rivals Knott’s Berry Farm (3.8 million), Universal Studios Hollywood (4.6 million) and Disneyland (10.3 million) in 1994, according to Amusement Business. But while Disneyland’s attendance fell 10% in 1994, Magic Mountain’s surged 6% from 1993, and Pittman said Hurricane Harbor will give Six Flags something Disney doesn’t have: a second gate at the same location.

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Construction of Hurricane Harbor started in September, and last week workers were still rushing to level earth and carve out paths for waterways. In nearby maintenance shops, artisans sculpted and molded the more than 800 fiberglass statues, sea animals and other props that will dot the park’s landscape. Bill Birney, who supervises the prop-design team, said his seven-man crew is working six- and seven-day weeks to meet the June deadline.

The park is the latest in a series of costly improvements made at Magic Mountain since Time Warner bought 20% of the Six Flags amusement park chain in 1990. In 1993, Time Warner bought the rest of Six Flags Theme Parks Inc., which operates nine amusement parks around the country.

Pittman said he expects the addition of Hurricane Harbor to push attendance at the combined park--to be called Six Flags California--over the 4 million mark. But more importantly, he hopes the new park will entice visitors to stay longer and spend more money. Instead of paying $29 for a one-day pass to Magic Mountain, now visitors might spend $40 or more for a two-day pass to both parks. Meanwhile, visitors would also be shelling out more money for food, souvenirs and other goodies.

But unlike its larger competitors to the south, Six Flags seems content to let go of visitors’ wallets after they leave the park. Universal Studios capitalized on the drawing power of its theme park last year by opening CityWalk, a neon-lit promenade of restaurants and shops. And since 1955, Disneyland has encouraged its guests to stay at the Disneyland Hotel, which now has 1,136 rooms and is connected to the theme park by monorail.

In contrast, there are only about 800 hotel rooms throughout the Santa Clarita Valley that surrounds Magic Mountain, and Six Flags owns none of them. Pittman said there are no plans to change that.

“We want to . . . invest in an area where we have expertise,” Pittman said. “I think other people can do hotels better than us, but I don’t think anybody can do rides better than us.”