How Busy Was Thorpe Park on Sunday, 29 September 2019?
Thorpe Park was exceptionally quiet on Sunday, 29 September 2019. Across the day the average wait across all rides was 8 minutes, with the longest queue reaching 13 minutes for SAW - The Ride around 11:00. The full hour-by-hour breakdown for every ride is below.
Average wait in minutes per ride per hour (UK time), recorded on the day from the park's live wait-time system.
- Longest wait of the day: SAW - The Ride at 13 minutes (around 11:00).
- Average across all rides: 8 minutes.
- Quietest hour: 11:00 UK time.
| Ride | 11:00 | 12:00 | 13:00 | 14:00 | 15:00 | 16:00 | 17:00 | 18:00 | 19:00 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SAW - The Ride | 13 | 13 | 13 | 13 | 13 | 13 | 13 | 13 | 13 | 13 |
| The Swarm | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 |
| Nemesis Inferno | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 |
| Storm Surge | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 |
| Rush | 11 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 11 |
| Stealth | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 |
| Detonator | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 |
| The Walking Dead©: The Ride | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 |
| Tidal Wave | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 |
| Colossus | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Vortex | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Samurai | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Flying Fish | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Depth Charge | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Mr Monkey's Banana Ride | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
Cells show the average standby wait during that hour. Blue = 20 min or under, orange = 21–60 min, navy = over 60 min.
What happened on Sunday, 29 September 2019
Sunday 29 September was an exceptionally quiet day at Thorpe Park. Across every ride we recorded, the average standby wait came out at 8 minutes, roughly 60% below the 20-minute average across every day we have recorded.
That makes it a quieter-than-usual Sunday — other Sundays in the archive average 20 minutes. Weekends are consistently the busiest part of the week here, so this is the harder end of the spectrum to plan around.
Queues stayed remarkably level all day rather than showing the usual lunchtime hump — there was no obviously good or bad hour to be walking around the park. The single longest queue we recorded was SAW - The Ride at 13 minutes, around 11:00.
The rides holding the longest queues were SAW - The Ride, The Swarm and Nemesis Inferno — SAW - The Ride averaged 13 minutes across the whole day. At the other end, ten rides averaged 10 minutes or less — Stealth, Detonator, The Walking Dead©: The Ride and Tidal Wave were close to walk-on for most of the day.
A day like this is what people mean when they talk about the park being empty. On this level of demand there is little to plan around: you can ride in whatever order you like, Fastrack would have been wasted money, and re-rides are essentially free. You can compare this with other dates in the full archive, work out which days of the year behave like this using the queue calendar, and read the underlying tactics in our guide to beating the queues.
Based on readings taken every 2 minutes across 9 hours of operation, from 11:00 to 19:00, covering 15 rides. Figures are the wait times posted by the park, averaged per hour; a dash in the table means the ride reported no wait for that hour, usually because it was closed.