How Busy Was Thorpe Park on Friday, 15 May 2026?
Thorpe Park was exceptionally quiet on Friday, 15 May 2026. Across the day the average wait across all rides was 9 minutes, with the longest queue reaching 34 minutes for Hyperia 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: Hyperia at 34 minutes (around 11:00).
- Average across all rides: 9 minutes.
- Quietest hour: 17:00 UK time.
| Ride | 10:00 | 11:00 | 12:00 | 13:00 | 14:00 | 15:00 | 16:00 | 17:00 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hyperia | 30 | 34 | 32 | 27 | 28 | 26 | 17 | 20 | 27 |
| Storm Surge | 5 | 11 | 21 | 15 | 15 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 14 |
| SAW - The Ride | 8 | 28 | 12 | 12 | 9 | 10 | – | – | 13 |
| The Swarm | 11 | 27 | 14 | 9 | 9 | 6 | 8 | 5 | 11 |
| Ghost Train | – | – | 16 | 14 | 15 | 10 | 7 | 5 | 11 |
| Nemesis Inferno | 5 | 23 | 21 | 10 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 10 |
| Colossus | 7 | 29 | 14 | 9 | 7 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 10 |
| Stealth | 7 | 15 | 12 | 6 | 12 | 10 | 5 | 5 | 9 |
| Rush | 6 | 12 | 10 | 7 | 10 | 10 | 5 | 5 | 8 |
| Flying Fish | 7 | 7 | 7 | 10 | 10 | 12 | 7 | 5 | 8 |
| Depth Charge | 6 | 6 | 6 | 5 | 14 | 9 | 11 | 10 | 8 |
| The Walking Dead©: The Ride | 5 | 7 | 5 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 5 | 5 | 6 |
| Detonator | 5 | 8 | 5 | 7 | 7 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 6 |
| Samurai | 5 | 9 | 8 | 5 | 5 | 8 | 5 | 5 | 6 |
| Vortex | 5 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 8 | 7 | 8 | 5 | 6 |
| Mr Monkey's Banana Ride | 5 | 6 | 5 | 8 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 6 |
| High Striker | 5 | 5 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 5 | 7 | 5 | 6 |
| Tidal Wave | 5 | 5 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Quantum | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Dobble Tea Party | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Big Easy Bumpers | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Ready Player One 4D Experience | Age Rating 12A | – | – | 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 Friday, 15 May 2026
Friday 15 May was an exceptionally quiet day at Thorpe Park. Across every ride we recorded, the average standby wait came out at 9 minutes, roughly 55% below the 20-minute average across every day we have recorded.
That makes it a quieter-than-usual Friday — other Fridays in the archive average 22 minutes. Against May as a whole, which averages 16 minutes, it was one of the lighter days of the month.
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 quietest hour across the park was 17:00. The single longest queue we recorded was Hyperia at 34 minutes, around 11:00.
The rides holding the longest queues were Hyperia, Storm Surge and SAW - The Ride — Hyperia averaged 27 minutes across the whole day and touched 34 at its worst. At the other end, 17 rides averaged 10 minutes or less — Nemesis Inferno, Colossus, Stealth and Rush 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 8 hours of operation, from 10:00 to 17:00, covering 22 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.