(FORTUNE Magazine) – Long a staple in movie theaters and video games, outer-space thrills are moving into amusement parks, which have been having an unexciting ride lately. In late October, InterActive Entertainment, a Canadian company, will open an attraction in Toronto called Tour of the Universe, which uses flight simulators and computer technology to create the experience of a space shuttle trip to Jupiter in the year 2019. The company is developing similar attractions in Australia and Japan. Walt Disney Productions is working with George Lucas, the Hollywood director, to create a Star Wars-like attraction to boost its theme parks. In late September an entrepreneur from Dallas opened the first franchise of Photon, in which players participate in a simulated space-age battle. Photon is the creation of George Carter III, a 40-year-old tinkerer who ran miniature Grand Prix race tracks before he opened the prototype for Photon in Dallas in early 1984 and rang up $850,000 in sales the first year. The franchise in Kenilworth, New Jersey, is the first of 75 that have been sold around the U.S. and Canada for about $75,000 each. In the game, played on a futuristic alien terrain complete with fog, obstacles, and eerie sounds, two teams of up to ten players try to score as many points as possible in 6.5 minutes by firing ''phasers'' at each other. The phasers shoot light beams that register on sensors strapped to players. Hits are radio-transmitted to a central computer. Amusement parks could use some new ideas. Attendance at six of the biggest amusement parks totaled 44 million in 1984, down 7% from the year before, according to Amusement Business, a trade newspaper. Carter says that customers have tired of the parks' predictable pleasures and that the entertainment industry must offer attractions that require more audience involvement. ''Amusements will become experiences that recreate your fantasies,'' he says.