Still riding the Titanic wave, Fox opens Mexico movie park

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ROSARITO, Mexico - In a town better known for sand and surf, the latest lure is celluloid.

Fox Studios Baja, which brought the world "Titanic," opened its new movie theme park last week, giving visitors an inside look at the making of films - including that romantic blockbuster, whose value as a marketing hook here has seemed, well, unsinkable.

The park, called Foxploration, is modest in size (with seven acres and room for 3,000 visitors) and in thrill potential (there are no rides - nary a turning teacup). To prevent inflated expectations, the studio is taking pains to distinguish the park from bigger, more famous and ride-heavy cousins, such as Universal Studios. (At $12 for adult admission, Foxploration is a lot less expensive.)

Executives even hesitate to call it a theme park.

"We're somewhere between an interactive science museum and something that's undefined," said Charlie Arneson, general manager of Fox Studios Baja. "For lack of a better word, we're calling it a movie park, because it's about making movies. We're something completely different."

A hands-on exhibit called Cinemagico, for example, gives away secrets of the film business, revealing how optical illusions, robotic machines and sound effects are employed.

Jose Luis Manzano, a Tijuana construction worker, snapped pictures as his two sons and a nephew pretended to hoist themselves up the side of a skyscraper. The boys, 2 to 5, had come expecting rides, Manzano said. But the trio appeared unfazed by that as they screeched while clamoring inside a fake airplane cockpit, their images projected on a television screen.

Elsewhere, there is a faux New York City street - to be used in future productions - and an on-site screening room. Arrayed throughout are props from Fox films elsewhere, including a restored fountain from the 1969 movie "Hello Dolly" and a guillotine from last year's "Quills."

But there was no mistaking the star of this show. Guides offer tours in English and Spanish around a 19,000-square-foot "Titanic Expo," which brims with props and sets: lifeboats, furniture, mock shipboard salons and engines and, attached to a pipe, "authentic" handcuffs that tethered the Leonardo DiCaprio character, Jack.

Foxploration, which is about 20 miles south of Tijuana and the U.S.-Mexico border, grew out of the seaside studio which was built by 20th Century Fox to film "Titanic" in 1996.

Baja California tourism officials see Foxploration as a way to draw more family visitors to Rosarito - a mecca for spring-break revelers and a magnet on many summer weekends for youthful U.S. visitors in search of drink specials and inexpensive beach hotels.

Baja officials hope that the Rosarito studio, which has been used in about 10 films, soon will get to claim a piece of another box-office behemoth. The studio's giant water tanks, employed for "Titanic," were used to shoot part of "Pearl Harbor." A ship's bow and propeller from that movie, which opens this weekend, are displayed.