After years of attempting to find a new permanent home, the Bell Family and officials from the City of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma announced the amusement park would finally re-open. The new Bell’s Amusement Park is to be located in the Tulsa suburb. The park will be constructed on a 100-acre plot of land, and is being designed for 3 season use with an anticipated operating calendar running March through December. Robby Bell, the man in charge of his family’s business venture, did not yes provide an opening date. He did however indicate that, as part of the “thrill park” section of the new Bell’s, the Phantasmagoria dark ride would reopen.
Phantasmagoria was a dark ride featuring Bill Tracy stunts. The cars and track were built in house by Bell’s in the 1970s, and it operated at the park through it’s initial closing in 2006. The ride has been kept in storage since then; it is not known if is the intention of the Bell family to resurrect Phantasmagoria as it originally operated or in an updated state.
Bell’s Amusement Park closed in 2006 when it’s lease was not renewed by the Tulsa State Fairgrounds in which it leased 10 acres of property for it’s home. The decision was highly controversial at the time, as Bell’s was a profitable and well attended park who provided the highest revenue generation for the fair board throughout the year. Potential conflicts of interest with the midway operator for the fair (Jerry Murphy/Murphy Brothers Expositions, who also owned a water park across the street from Bell’s) were brought up by media in subsequent years. Bell’s also briefly reopened as a kiddie park attached to a flea market in the early 2010s, though this was short lived.
