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Magic Mountain Seeks to Amuse Young Children and Their Parents

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

Six Flags Magic Mountain is best known for its arsenal of adrenaline-pumping, stomach-swirling rides--making the park a magnet for teenagers.

But being No. 1 for thrill-seeking youth isn’t good enough anymore for the Valencia park, especially in light of an attendance dip last year. This spring, as part of an effort to attract more young children and their families, Magic Mountain is launching Bugs Bunny World, a kinder, gentler set of rides just for kids.

In a region teeming with competition, Magic Mountain is looking to broaden its appeal.

“We never lose sight of the fact that we own thrills in Southern California,” said Bonnie Rabjohn, marketing director of Magic Mountain. “But we have other things to do. We’re hoping that with this new attraction people will start viewing Magic Mountain as a place they can come with little kids.”

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Bugs World, which will open in late May, will be six brightly colored acres populated with the park’s cast of Looney Tunes characters. New rides include a smoke-belching choo-choo train, a carousel and Daffy’s Adventure Tours, where Daffy Duck takes kids--and their parents--on a bumpy bus ride. Park promoters declined to discuss the construction cost of the new rides.

The direction Magic Mountain is headed makes a lot of sense, industry analysts say. With 11 full-sized roller coasters, including the world’s fastest standing coaster added last year, the park already attracts so many young people that it has a reputation as rowdy, especially after a 1993 riot that took 425 officers to quell. What Magic Mountain needed, experts say, was an essential kids’ element.

“Seldom do parks want to rely just on teenagers,” said Tim O’Brien, who tracks theme parks for trade journal Amusement Business (the title is not an oxymoron, the journal insists). “A park like Magic Mountain needs to go after families, little kids, grandma and grandpa.”

The opposite is happening an hour’s drive south at Knott’s Berry Farm. At Knott’s, the park has been branching out from home cooking in a family-style atmosphere to white-knuckle fun.

“Our roots are in food and shopping,” said Knott’s spokesman Bob Ochsner, referring to the park’s origin as a boysenberry farm with a chicken dinner restaurant. “But in the last 10 years, we’ve increased our thrill-ride arsenal to become more attractive to thrill seekers of all ages, including teens.”

Last year, Knott’s added two new rides, including the $25-million Ghostrider coaster, the longest in the West. The new rides helped hold attendance at 3.4 million, the 1997 level, according to Amusement Business.

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By comparison, Magic Mountain, owned by Oklahoma City-based Premier Parks Inc., saw attendance slip 5% from 1997 to 3.2 million last year, Amusement Business said.

Knott’s has seven thrill rides now, up from two in 1989. Cedar Fair Ltd., an Ohio-based amusement company, bought Knott’s in 1997 and is helping accelerate the transformation to a more exciting theme park, Ochsner said.

But if parks like Magic Mountain and Knott’s depart too far from their core business, don’t they risk diluting their brand identity?

Possibly, said Michael King, a former Disneyland executive who works as an amusement park consultant.

“A place like Knott’s is searching for itself, and it appears Knott’s will soon be going head-to-head with Magic Mountain,” King said. “But there should be enough to go around. Those two parks can divide up the pie and compete pretty happily.”

Yet more competition is coming. Two years from now, Disney will launch California Adventure, a new theme park adjoining Disneyland that will incorporate more rides and lots of California attitude. The new park is Disney’s way of injecting more thrills into family fun and a way to attract the amusement park crowd, said O’Brien, the theme park writer.

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“The trend is to go after the cross market,” O’Brien said. “These days when parks say they are going after everybody from 2 to 92, they’re not kidding.”

And the competition is getting tougher. This coming weekend, LegoLand--a $130-million shrine to building blocks--opens in Carlsbad. And Universal Studios will debut its 3-D Terminator attraction in May.

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