Mirakulum park near Prague to build Czechia's fastest coaster

The founder of Czechia's largest family amusement park, Jiří Antoš, has announced record investments worth hundreds of millions of crowns — his company is building a unique wooden roller coaster unlike anything the country has seen before. At the same time, the businessman is tackling an equally difficult task: how to hand over his “fairy-tale kingdom” to one of his four heirs.

Antoš built the Mirakulum park near the town of Milovice on the site of a former Soviet tank training ground. It all started fourteen years ago with a single wooden castle with underground passages — today it is the largest family amusement park in Czechia, spanning 12 hectares. More than 356,000 visitors come here every year — more than the combined attendance of Karlštejn Castle, the Tugendhat Villa and the Terezín memorial.

The park today includes a water world, a forest town, a farm and petting zoo, a rope park, giant trampolines, a go-kart track for children, the 13-metre Vertiko tower with slides and balance bridges, as well as a mine with gnomes and gemstones.

Now Antoš is preparing the biggest investment in the park's history. The new wooden roller coaster will reach a height of 28 metres, hit speeds of up to 77 km/h, and its track will run more than a kilometre long. Part of the route will go underground, with its own maintenance station and a lift that hoists the carts before their plunge.

At the same time, the entrepreneur has spent more than a year thinking about how to fairly divide his life's work among his four heirs and who should take over running the park. For him, the question of succession is no less pressing than building the park's biggest new attraction.