Returning 15 years later, I'm reminded of the scene from "The Wizard of Oz", where Dorothy says to her pooch, "Toto, I have the feeling we're not in Kansas anymore". Over the past several years, movies and their special effects have gone space age and so have some of the lastest attractions on the Universal Studios tour, Electronic wizardry is slowly but surely stealing the show.

That's not to say the old favorites aren't still there. You still get welcomed at the gate by a poor schnook dressed as Frankenstein, the 98 degree heat making him a tad listless under 10 pounds of costume and makeup. You still get to see Beaver Cleaver's house, the Black Lagoon (minus the creature), the Wild West stuntmen and the flash flood created by the unleashing of 12,000 gallons of water. You travel on the street that has served as the set for everything from "All Quiet on the Western Front" to "The Deer Hunter."

But MCA Inc., Universal's parent, is fighting to boost sagging attendance a the old back lot. Visitors to the studio have dropped to the three million this year from the 1980 peak of 3.8 million. MCA blames the slump on depressed domestic travel, fewer foreign visitors and competition from more modern attractions such as Disney's Epcot Center in Florida. "We've been hitting ourselves on the head looking for new things to do", laments MCA's president Sidney Sheinberg.

To lure more visitors, MCA is aggressively advertising the tour for the first time and is even considering renaming "Universal Movie World." The company has added a new special effects show based on the futuristic barbarians from the movie "Conan the Barbarian", which starred muscle man Arnold Schwarzenegger. It features an Arnold clone playing Conan, along with a barbarian princess who appearantly pumps some mean iron herself, an evil wizard and an 18-foot, fire breathing dragon.

To put all this together, Universal hired Peter Alexander, the Disney special effects expert who helped design Epcot Center. "We wanted to give the audience a live version of the kinds of special effects they see in the movies", he says. The show is run by six computers that control such things as the argon lasers that shoot our of the dragon's eyes. The computers also send the impulses to the air cylinder that move the glass fiber, aluminum and foam rubber creature - one of the largest fully animated models of it's kind.

All this is very convincing. Those lasers pack 25 watts of power, and if you stand there long enough, "they'll burn a hole through you hand", Mr. Alexander promises.

Chemicals such as sodium nitrate explode when the evil wizard appears and disappears in a blaze of colored smoke. And that's real fire that dragon is breathing. A flame thrower nozzle shoots jets of gas that are ignited by spark plugs in the beast's teeth.

Even the standard tour of the 450 acre lot has been livened up with space age effects. It all starts as the Glamour Tram - string of open tram cars wends its way into the darkened cavern for what our chirpy tour guide dubs an "intergalactic journey."

Suddenly, the dark is broken by flashes of red, green and blue laser beams zapping before your noses fired by alien creatures right out of the bar scene in "Star Wars." This cosmic fracas, based on Universal's movie and television series "Battlestar Galactica", takes place once every 2 ½ minutes at peak tour time, as computer controlled optical switches route the argon lasers though a system of mirrors on the floor. Because laser light bounces off mirrors without diffusing, the technical crew can make a laser beam jump off the mirror and appear to fire out of a gun in an actor's hand - without risking that actor's misfiring and burning a slow hole through a goggle eyed tourist.

We rattle along in the trams through crashing bridges, blazing fires and jungles of old props like the stern-wheeler from "Showboat". Then there's a huge pond with the sign "Welcome to Amityville." A lone fisherman sits in a boat, and - you guessed it - a shark fin heads for our tram at the water's edge, and the guide stars yelling that now the shark is after us.

Little kids are crying and screaming. I'm playing it very cool when this motorized shark - a more durable urethane rubber replica of the one used in "Jaws" - bursts out of the water in front of me, brandishing eight rows of choppers in his gaping maw. Docorum gone, I let our a yell as hydraulically driven creature disappears into the depths and the tram rolls off once again.

In several darkened sound stages, we're treated to a show giving the inside dope on things like how the little kids in "E.T." were made to fly over the treetops on their bicycles. Special techniques allow the film to be superimposed on the matte painting, we're told. The same techniques, with the aid of computers, make it look as though two audience volunteers in a spaceship are hurling though an asteroid storm in space when, in reality, the tour guide is just jiggling their craft and and film of that is being superimposed on a simulated asteroid shower.

Despite Universal's worries that attendence at the studio are down, on peak days and weekends in the summer and fall the tour can test even the most patient of movie fans. The brochures say "plan on spending at least five hours with us", but they don't mention that much of that time may be spent standing in line, stranded in special waiting areas where one has little choice but to spend money on junk food and souvenirs. While waiting for the trams, tour-goers also serve as a captive audience for promotional trailers for Universal's television shows and movies.

But the new attractions, combined with the wonderful old Universal sets, made the tour worth a return visit. The studio almost qualifies as a national monument - Universal first opened its gates to the public in 1915 for the admission of 25 cents (box lunch included). Now, it costs $10.95 and your get dollars off coupons at fast food emporiums like Womhopper's Wagonworks of Victoria Station.

More technological wonders are in the works, special effects chief Mr. Alexander promises, including a King Kong show scheduled to debut in 1985. "King Kong" will feature a 30- foot animated gorilla that will entertain tour-goers by - you guessed it again - ambushing the Glamour Trams.