THEME PARKS : What Would Walt Say? : It’s a great big, beautiful tomorrow--at least it used to be. Disneyland’s new rides may draw large crowds, but what’s happened to long-time favorites? It’s a nostalgic world after all.

Like the good Baby Boomer that it is, Disneyland marked its 40th birthday last summer by getting itself a sporty off-road vehicle.

The Indiana Jones Adventure ride has all the razzle-dazzle you could ask for in any attempt by an aging institution to keep a youthful image. The lines for Indy have run upward of three hours at times, high even by the standards of brand-new flashy attractions.

But not everyone is obsessed with the shake-em-up, spiders ‘n’ snakes jeep trek.

Across the park in Tomorrowland the lines remain heavy--if not at the Indy level--for such seemingly anachronistic experiences as the Submarine Ride (see real, live plywood fish! thrill to the foam sea monsters! gasp as you dive six full inches into the briny deep!) and Autopia (better than the 405 at rush hour!).

All around the park the scenes are repeated. On a good day, people will queue for the patently quaint Storybook Land boats and the ever-irritating It’s a Small World (after all).

Such is the dual personality of Disneyland’s mid-life crisis. At the same time that Indy has brought fresh hordes to Anaheim, Disney nostalgia is on the upswing--especially for those who grew up in Southern California. We’re the ones who got to go every year and as we grew and changed, so did “our” Magic Kingdom. Every change was noted with great scrutiny and, when a favorite attraction was razed in the name of progress, dismay.

Bob Rogers, a former Disneyland employee whose BRC Imagination Arts company designs theme park attractions, will never forgive them for dismantling the Peter Pan Pirate Ship that used to be a centerpiece in Fantasyland.

“You took it out and burned it?” he recalls screaming at Disney execs at the time. “Damn it, that was my pirate ship!”

And it seems everyone has “their” pirate ship equivalent at Disneyland.

Can the two sides of the Disney equation continue to exist as the park heads into a bold new future?

Yes, insist the people who run the landmark. But it won’t be easy.

Talk to anyone in the Disneyland hierarchy and you’ll get quasi-mystical reverence for “Walt’s vision” of the park--a full three decades after Disney’s death.

“Walt’s name is evoked like a saint,” says one park official, who asked not to be named. “We quote his words like he was Jesus Christ--’Well, Walt wouldn’t do it this way.’

But at the same time, says Tony Baxter, senior vice president of creative development for Disney’s Imagineering division, which oversees the company’s theme park development, “I’m as pure as Disneyland fanatics can get. . . . When a new ride comes and an old one drops out, there are bound to be twinges. But it has to happen, or [Disneyland] becomes a museum and an arthritic collection of things people were attached to in the ‘60s.”

Perhaps the most-missed feature of the past today is the Adventure Thru Inner Space--known generally as the “Monsanto ride” for its corporate sponsor’s name. All in all it wasn’t much, just a illusory ride down to microscopic scale to discover the wonders of Astroturf.

“I loved shrinking down to the size of an atom,” sighs Sandy Itkoff, 33, a documentary producer from West Hollywood who has gone to the park regularly since childhood.

Certainly some of the nostalgia also stems from the ride’s reputation as a great “make-out” spot, but the memories are irreplaceable just the same. But when Inner Space was torn down to make way for outer space--in the shape of George Lucas’ Star Tours simulator in 1987--there was little evidence of such cultural attachment.

“People [had] stopped going on it and that’s why they closed it,” says the Disneyland official. “Now they want to ride it.”

On a recent, crowded Saturday at Disneyland, people around the park--from their 20s to mid-50s--waxed nostalgic for other favorite defunct rides. Among the lost and lamented: Tomorrowland’s Carousel of Progress (“It’s a great, big, beautiful tomorrow” ended in 1973) and Flying Saucers, bumper cars that floated on air jets (removed in 1966 because of high maintenance costs), the mule rides--yes, just rides on real mules (taken out 1973)--and the Nature’s Wonderland train (removed in 1977 because of lack of ridership).

The truth is, while “Walt’s vision” is guarded fiercely, few attractions in the park are truly sacred. Many people who have been to Disneyland lately don’t even seem to notice the absences of both the Skyway buckets connecting Tomorrowland and Fantasyland via the Matterhorn and the Mission to Mars ride (nee Flight to the Moon).

“It’s always been this way at Disneyland,” says Marty Sklar, who began working for the company as park publicist before it opened in 1955 and has been president of Imagineering since 1987. “It was like on opening day the one real dynamic was change. . . . Walt’s famous quote was ‘Disneyland will never be completed as long as there’s imagination left in the world.’ ”

Given that, any trip to the park can be full of nagging concerns about what favorite attraction will just be a memory next time.

How long can the archaic Tiki Room--where the main function today seems to be to handle overflow from the Indy lines--be kept going? Or Tom Sawyer’s Island, merely a big pile of rocks that takes up a good chunk of prime real estate?

“I can’t imagine it without Tom Sawyer,” says Sklar, who nonetheless admits that he was largely responsible for the demolition of the equally cherished Pirate Ship.

To Baxter, who spearheaded the development of the Indiana Jones ride, it’s the Tiki Room that is untouchable--in contrast to his anti-museum stance.

“It revolutionized the industry,” he says .”It’s the first time sound and movement have been sequenced to a three-dimensional performance. To me it’s important. It should belong if only as an institution.”

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It’s uncertain whether these two attractions would be so safe if they didn’t have advocates in Disney’s upper echelons. But there have been cases of ready-for-removal features being spared thanks to forces that are larger than any kind of tangible business concerns.

“We talked about removing Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln a couple years back and we got killed,” says Disneyland president Paul Pressler. “People said it was not yours to make the decision. The truth is it’s the least-trafficked attraction we have.”

(The lines for the animatronic emancipator are, in fact, negligible next to the crowd at the cash machine two doors down.)

And recently the park nearly shuttered the Sleeping Beauty’s Castle walk-through that tells the beloved fairy tale through simple dioramas. In this case it was a caring employee who organized a letter-writing campaign among Disneyland fans on the Internet that saved the day.

And don’t even think about touching It’s a Small World.

“They would be lynched it they took it out,” says Christopher Finch, author of the highly acclaimed book “The Art of Walt Disney,” recently reissued in an updated edition. “The park is holy ground for many Americans.”

That doesn’t mean the rides aren’t tamper-proof. Mr. Lincoln got a face-lift in 1985 and plans are on the drawing board for a modernization of the Tiki Room’s singing wildlife--ranging from simply changing the songs and adding celebrity voices (Bette Midler, Jim Nabors and bickering film critics Siskel & Ebert had been mentioned) to turning it into a full-fledged dinner-theater extravaganza.

“I personally would like to change the music,” says John Hench, senior vice president of Imagineering and 55-year veteran of the organization. “ ‘Let’s All Sing Like the Birdies Sing’--I never liked that.”

Also due for replacement is the Main Street Electrical Parade, a procession of half a million lights on 30 floats that has been a popular spring and summer feature since 1972. It will make its final run from March to October next year; a new “high-tech” parade will bow in spring 1977.

Meanwhile, over at Tomorrowland the future ain’t what it used to be--and it’s going to get more so.

For much of its existence, Tomorrowland was just what the name implied: space-themed rides complemented and contexed with exhibits of actual future technologies (remember the House of Tomorrow?). But that latter element ceased to work as an accelerated technological evolution radically shortened the life expectancy of tomorrow.

With that in mind, the future is about to get a make-over. In the first phase of a sweeping change for the doddering region, the 3-D “Captain Eo” film (featuring Michael Jackson in a previous incarnation) will be replaced by “Honey I Shrunk the Audience,” already wowing audiences at Disney World in Florida.

Next up will be Alien Encounter in the house of the old Mission to Mars, with plans for a new film for Star Tours (and a total revamping when Lucas’ next “Star Wars” film premiers, probably around the turn of the millennium).

Still in limbo is the ultimate fate of the People Mover--the snail-paced elevated transportation system prototype that is now idle. A motorcycle ride is one use for the track that has been discussed.

But the biggest plan to return some of Tomorrowland’s past cachet is Innovention, using the Carousel of Progress (later Admerica Sings) site for a “hands-on, walk-around, interactive” exhibit of futuristic innovations.

The difference, accommodating the light-speed pace of development, is that now instead of 20 years ahead, the displays will look just six months into the future.

“We will showcase the best and brightest of new technology,” says Pressler. “How it will work for you.”

One person with a particularly keen eye on Tomorrowland is author Ray Bradbury, a Disneyland fanatic and a close friend of Walt Disney himself.

“I had lunch with [Disney] six months before he died and he was working on changing Tomorrowland,” Bradbury says. “I wanted to be a consultant, but he said, ‘I can’t hire you. You’re a genius and I’m a genius. We would kill each other the first week.’ It’s the nicest compliment I ever got.”

Of the new plans, Bradbury says, “If [Disney] were alive today, he would be doing it over as well. It’s like what he planned. . . . If they don’t, I will nag them.”

Arguably the future is already on display at Indiana Jones, with technologies unthinkable back in the days when the Matterhorn bobsleds and Submarine were state-of-the-art. But, some lament, that use runs counter to the engaging quality of earlier attractions in favor of a bombardment of rapid-fire images and thrills that leave no room for visitors to fill in the gaps with their own imaginations.

Disney officials insist it’s a reflection of how the cultural mind-set has changed.

“Today’s technology simply gives our storytellers more tools to enhance the stories and make them more real,” Pressler says.

Says Baxter, “Indy served up what the public was ripe for at the time,” says Baxter. “Disneyland is a repository for the best of American myth. The movies have changed, gotten a more frenetic pace, but with the same great music and animation. And the values have changed: Snow White’s only dream was cooking, cleaning house and waiting for her prince to come. She’s not like Belle who says hell with this guy, he’s a big jerk, I want to grow and be my own person.”

Indiana Jones is still in the tradition, they say, of Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion, somewhat more low key but considered perhaps the signature rides of the past 20 years, as evidenced by their enduring status among the most-beloved of rides. Still, even the most die-hard of Disney apologists inevitably cite more simple activities--listening to Main Street’s dixieland bands, people-watching while sitting on a bench, seeing an adult cavort in mouse ears or watching someone beam as a park character hugs them--as what makes the park environment so special.

And little touches such as Snow White’s wishing well remain, with additional ones such as a statue of the Triton character from “The Little Mermaid” soon to be erected on Main Street.

Disney traditionalists also cite the 1993 opening of the “Roger Rabbit”-themed Toon Town as a continuation of the park’s tradition of creating whole-cloth fantasy environments, with every detail meticulously designed to heighten the effect of an alternate reality. Another such environment is in the works to be spun off the next Disney animated adventure, “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” which is scheduled to be in theaters in June.

Pressler describes the “Hunchback” installation as a Renaissance Faire-like setting “where people can interact and not have to be programmed for a particular show or event. Toon Town does that too, where it’s mostly about atmosphere.”

The danger seems to be that, as Bob Rogers says, “Disneyland is gradually becoming a place that is frantic. At least one time a day when I’m there I find myself yelling at my kids because they get overstimulated.”

Valerie and Greg Mitbo, taking their 3-year-old daughter Mimi on her first Storybook Land ride (now with “Aladdin” and “The Little Mermaid” scenes), complained, “It’s become an older crowd, more a kind of teenage, college crowd, and the new rides are catering to older people.”

Others surveyed on that recent Saturday also complained that it’s always too crowded and harried. You get the feeling that many Disneyland visitors would be just as happy without the trumpeted spectacles. Eric, an 11-year-old boy from L.A., said that day that though he really liked Indy, the best time he spent at Disneyland was his hour on Tom Sawyer’s Island--despite the fact that it’s just rocks with no special effects.

“It’s kind of cool without it,” he said. “It’s not high-tech--it’s like being out in the wilderness. There are a lot of caves and it’s fun to hand around there, run around and play tag.”

But would they come in enough numbers to satisfy “the sharp pencil boys”, as Disney himself called them?

“They will tell you the blockbusters make economic sense, and for everything else, you are wasting time,” says Rogers. “If you can’t do a TV commercial for it, don’t do it. This hurts us in putting in the medium and small things that entertain a few people, but are the life and blood of the thing.”

So in 2015, when Eric and his peers return with their kids, what will be their Disneyland nostalgia? Is it possible that Indiana Jones will be their Pirate Ship or Monsanto Ride?

“They’ll look back on Indiana Jones and it won’t seem like a high-tech thrill ride anymore,” assures Pressler. “And anyway, it’s not about one attraction, but the whole place.”