Lots of Disney blood surges through theme park world.

As an entertainment industry pioneer, Walt Disney Co. has employed many technical whizzes. But despite Disney's success and the perks it offered, not all the sorcerers in the Magic Kingdom were happy. A cadre of Disney defectors has gone on to successfully run their own companies, creating futuristic theme park attractions and interactive entertainment.

A Disney dropout cottage industry is growing in the shadow of Disney's Imagineering division, which is the fount for Disney's theme park technological developments. There are well over a dozen high-tech entertainment firms in the Burbank/Universal City area owned by former Disney techies.

These firms are thriving by tackling animation projects for niche parks and by creating new interactive software for theaters. Much of their success has come overseas, especially in the Orient where clients are impressed with their Disney credentials.

Iwerks Entertainment in Burbank is the largest and fastest growing, with annual sales volume of $30 million. To accelerate growth, Iwerks recently took Itochu Corp., Japan's largest trading company, as its lead investor for its new Cinetropolis concept.

At Cinetropolis, Iwerks will introduce an 18-seat theater where gyrating seats will enable viewers to move as they watch a Peter Gabriel video. In a separate dance hall, a 360-degree screen will surround dancers showing cuts of music videos from Madonna and other acts.

Cinetropolis debuts in suburban Connecticut in October and will also offer giant screen venues. By the end of 1995, there will be five Cinetropolis sites in Europe and Asia. Iwerks Chairman Stan Kinsey predicts Cinetropolis will propel Iwerks to $100 million in sales in less than five years.

Kinsey, 39, spent five years at Disney while his partner, Don Iwerks, 63, was responsible for engineering and building Disney's specialized cameras and editing equipment for 25 years. Iwerks' father was a close associate of Walt Disney, animating the company's franchise cartoon characters in the 1930s. Iwerks and Kinsey formed the company in 1986.

Neither Iwerks nor Kinsey wants to talk about Disney days, preferring to accentuate the present and future. They are sensitive to any suggestion that the Disney connection led to their current success and they make it clear that the software-driven attractions they created weren't plucked from the Disney think tank.

Iwerks has done subcontract work for another Burbank company, BRC Imagination Arts. Bob Rogers, BRC's president and chief executive, calls himself a Disney graduate, having working as a teenage magician at Disneyland in 1968.

After holding various film production posts over 15 years within the company, Rogers started BRC in 1981. It now has annual sales of about $10 million.

Rogers was able to lure talent away from Disney after Michael Eisner left Paramount and took over at Disney. Eisner's personnel changes at Imagineering encouraged Pat Scanlon, BRC's executive vice president, to join Rogers in 1991.

Scanlon spent 18 years at Disney and says, "The atmosphere changed, they (the new management) wanted their own people, so it was time for me to collect my marbles. It was a great ride but it was time to do something else."

According to Rogers, who is 43 but says emotionally he feels 11, "I've been fired three times by them, so it seemed fun to start my own business. Disney is the best in the world at the giant projects and while I was there, we discussed doing small, narrow-focus theme parks.

"They elected not to act on the theory but we have proved that a niche theme park suited to a local area can work," Rogers says. "All the mega-parks have been built but there are smaller sites where investors can see a return with 1.5 to 3 million visitors annually."

Last fall Space Center Houston opened, marking the end of a five year, $70 million project for BRC. Through interactive displays, large-screen format films, stage presentations and historical exhibits, BRC tells the story of the NASA space program and Johnson Space Center.

BRC is about to start a project for Knotts Berry Farm but, because of intense competition in the theme park business, the project has been kept hush-hush and has not been announced yet.

Out in Valencia, Alvaro Villa is wrestling with a dinosaur deadline. His AVG Inc. has three weeks to complete work on a pack of animated dinosaurs that will be shipped to Japan for a special traveling exhibition being built by the Fuji Television Network. The exhibition will tour Asia and debuts in July.

AVG's factory floor looks like a dinosaur jigsaw puzzle, with different dinosaur parts being assembled. When all the parts come together there will be small flying reptiles, a toothy T-Rex and a more benign 50-foot-high brontosaurus among the 12-piece ensemble.

The hot competition among Las Vegas hotels has combined with the current dinosaur craze spawned by "Jurassic Park" to fuel AVG's business this year.

The new MGM Grand Hotel will have a theme park on its grounds with attractions revolving around well-known MGM films such as "The Wizard of Oz" and "Journey to the Center of the Earth." AVG put together the theme park attractions for the hotel's opening this fall.

Villa says, "If we don't make too many mistakes, we can make 20 percent profit on this dinosaur project. We must leverage this project and what we do for the MGM in Las Vegas. In this business you are only as good as your last project."

A native of Medellin, Colombia, Villa was a top electrical engineer at Disney and instrumental in putting Disney World together in 1971. He says he was a better engineer than a politician so he left the company, launching AVG in a 1,000-square-foot facility in Sunland 15 years ago.

His Disney credentials enabled him get a start working on projects for Universal's theme parks, Villa says, but his resume no longer has the propellant punch it once did.

"In the beginning clients knew we did quality work because of the Disney connection, but then we faced aggressive marketing competitors," Villa says. "It made us realize we had to compete in quality, in marketing and R&D."

Villa is constantly brainstorming and tinkering with new concepts for attractions. Sometimes he will develop a concept, then sell it, other times he will build someone else's dream.

Although known for animation and robotics, Villa has spent two years creating a new space theme ride where visitors can battle aliens from their own space vehicles. Negotiations have begun with an amusement park owner in Taipei. Villa said the ride could help double his business to $12 million this year.

In May, AVG finished "The Transformer," a car that rises and turns into giant robot-monster. The transformer was for a Korean auto client, Kia. The Transformer will stand and spout the benefits of the car to visitors at Korea's Worlds Fair in Pusan.

Villa says the Orient is the best growth area for the entertainment-tech industry. "We don't work by committees here. We brainstorm, then work quick, and that is why it's hard for the Japanese to compete directly with us.

"They are wonderful at the industrial production of cars," Villa adds, "but when you have to do one of a kind improvisational things, we have no competitors. With theme parks being built in Japan, Korea and China, it looks like 60 to 80 percent of our business will be coming from there."