DISNEY GUNNING FOR TEENS; INTERACTIVE RIDE PARK TO MAKE FLORIDA DEBUT.

Byline: Dave McNary Daily News Staff Writer

The Walt Disney Co., hoping to lure the elusive teen-age crowd with never-before-seen interactive thrill rides, rolls out its newest franchise Friday with its DisneyQuest indoor theme park in Florida.

Chances are toddlers who love Mickey Mouse and the singing and dancing dolls on It's a Small World won't be clamoring to go. DisneyQuest features such stomach-churning attractions as gravity-defying virtual roller coasters designed by the riders and air-supported rafts paddled through a roaring river surrounded by dinosaurs.

``I think DisneyQuest will draw well from teen-agers rather than younger kids,'' said analyst Linda Bannister of Edward Jones & Co. in St. Louis. ``I'd say the core crowd is anywhere from 9 to the early 20s. It seems that when children get over a certain age, they get much more into virtual reality.''

The first DisneyQuest, which can hold more than 1,400 customers at once, is being promoted as an afternoon's or evening's worth of entertainment.

Admission will be $7, $15 and $20, priced according to how many ``play units'' a customer wants. Disney spokeswoman Denise Villanueva promised minimal waits for rides, or, as she put it, ``You won't even know you're waiting.''

The Burbank-based entertainment giant, which has been developing the concept since the early 1990s at Walt Disney Imagineering, will launch the first DisneyQuest in the shadow of its massive Orlando, Fla., theme park complex next to the Pleasure Island and Downtown Disney attractions. The 100,000-square-foot facility will include two food-service areas operated by Calabasas-based Cheesecake Factory.

``They shouldn't have any problems getting customers to the first DisneyQuest,'' said Bannister, who toured the site with other Wall Street analysts during a morning-long presentation in April. ``I really enjoyed it.''

Success may be trickier when the second facility opens next summer in downtown Chicago, followed by as many as three per year for the next decade. Sites under consideration include Philadelphia and Anaheim, adjacent to the California Adventure theme park being built in the Disneyland parking lot. Disney has been in no hurry to commit to a project beyond Chicago.

``The Disney approach to new projects is almost Oriental,'' said Dennis Speigel, president of Cincinnati-based International Theme Park Services. ``They study it for a long time before they design and build it in order to be certain that they've got the concept right. They demonstrated that when they opened Animal Kingdom in Florida this spring after working on it for almost 10 years.''

Disney's go-slow approach gave Sega GameWorks - a joint venture between Sega, DreamWorks SKG and Universal Studios - the chance to build lower-cost versions of an interactive park for free-spending teens and young adults, and it has opened a half-dozen locations since March 1997. Several GameWorks executives came from Disney after working on DisneyQuest's development.

GameWorks, which already operates in Ontario and the City of Industry, plans to be in 100 sites by 2002. The sites are a combination of nightclub, arcade and theme park, backed by entertainment titan Steven Spielberg.

As for Disney, DisneyQuest is part of its parent's amped-up efforts to retain its status as the premiere brand name in entertainment through aggressive expansion into new ventures through its 2-year-old Regional Entertainment division. Within the last 18 months, it has launched the Club Disney play-park chain in Thousand Oaks and the ESPN Store in Glendale. It will open the first ESPN Zone restaurant in Baltimore next month.

``Developers have been looking for what works in small facilities to capture the demographic that spends the money,'' Speigel said. ``So you don't want to be a baby-sitter or go after people over 45. What you're looking for is offering people short bursts of entertainment.''

Disney has not disclosed how much it will spend on each facility, but Bannister estimated they will typically cost $30 million to $40 million to open. The key will be to attract local residents, she said.

``The whole point of these expansions by Disney is a recognition that people don't only spend leisure dollars on vacation,'' Bannister said. ``They spend on evenings and weekends, so these brand extensions are a way to get at dollars from people who are within an hour's drive. And after those people go to DisneyQuest, they're more likely to visit the other Disney sites.''

Speigel, who works as a consultant to the theme-park business, has already recommended to the developers of the Millennium Tower complex planned for Newport, Ky., that they consider including a DisneyQuest.

``We think a DisneyQuest could make a lot of sense for that location,'' he said.

COMING SOON

The DisneyQuest opening Friday in Florida has four sections:

Explore Zone, which includes a 150-foot-long slide, the Virtual Jungle Cruise, Hercules in the Underworld and Aladdin's Magic Carpet Ride.

Create Zone, which includes CyberSpace Mountain with a 360-degree pitch-and-roll simulator, Sid's Create-a-Toy, Magic Mirror and Living Easels.

Score Zone, which includes Ride the Comix!, Invasion! An Alien Encounter, and Mighty Ducks Pinball Slam.

Replay Zone, which includes ``classic'' rides such as Buzz Lightyear's AstroBlaster, Dumbo's Water Race and Mickey's Lunar Rally.

CAPTION(S):

Photo, Box

PHOTO (Color) Visitors to DisneyQuest in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. play Pinball Slam, a human pinball machine.

Peter Cosgrove/Associated Press

BOX: COMING SOON (see text)