How Busy Was Thorpe Park on Sunday, 17 May 2026?
Thorpe Park was quiet on Sunday, 17 May 2026. Across the day the average wait across all rides was 11 minutes, with the longest queue reaching 47 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 47 minutes (around 11:00).
- Average across all rides: 11 minutes.
- Quietest hour: 18:00 UK time.
| Ride | 10:00 | 11:00 | 12:00 | 13:00 | 14:00 | 15:00 | 16:00 | 17:00 | 18:00 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hyperia | 44 | 47 | 42 | 38 | 36 | 38 | 29 | 23 | 25 | 36 |
| SAW - The Ride | 5 | 37 | 35 | 28 | 26 | 29 | 28 | 11 | 5 | 23 |
| Storm Surge | 7 | 15 | 18 | 26 | 28 | 36 | 26 | 12 | 10 | 20 |
| Nemesis Inferno | 18 | 31 | 27 | 20 | 15 | 23 | 12 | 5 | 5 | 17 |
| The Swarm | 27 | 29 | 16 | 14 | 13 | 20 | 9 | 5 | 5 | 15 |
| Ghost Train | – | – | 20 | 19 | 19 | 20 | 15 | 8 | 5 | 15 |
| The Walking Dead©: The Ride | 5 | 11 | 17 | 15 | 14 | 18 | 15 | 13 | 5 | 13 |
| Stealth | 12 | 23 | 15 | 15 | 16 | 15 | 9 | 5 | 5 | 13 |
| Depth Charge | 6 | 15 | 10 | 15 | 20 | 20 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 13 |
| Colossus | 17 | 24 | 20 | 12 | 9 | 8 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 12 |
| Samurai | 5 | 17 | 16 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 11 | 6 | 5 | 11 |
| Rush | 7 | 14 | 9 | 6 | 5 | 16 | 12 | 5 | 5 | 9 |
| Vortex | 7 | 12 | 10 | 7 | 6 | 16 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 8 |
| Flying Fish | 7 | 10 | 5 | 7 | 10 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 7 |
| Big Easy Bumpers | 5 | 9 | 7 | 9 | 12 | 8 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 7 |
| Detonator | 6 | 7 | 5 | 6 | 11 | 8 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 6 |
| Tidal Wave | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 6 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Quantum | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Dobble Tea Party | 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 |
| High Striker | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 7 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Ready Player One 4D Experience | Age Rating 12A | – | – | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | – | 5 |
| The Playground | 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, 17 May 2026
Sunday 17 May was a quiet day at Thorpe Park. Across every ride we recorded, the average standby wait came out at 11 minutes, roughly 45% 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 19 minutes. Against May as a whole, which averages 16 minutes, it was one of the lighter days of the month. 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 quietest hour across the park was 18:00. The single longest queue we recorded was Hyperia at 47 minutes, around 11:00.
The rides holding the longest queues were Hyperia, SAW - The Ride and Storm Surge — Hyperia averaged 36 minutes across the whole day and touched 47 at its worst. At the other end, twelve rides averaged 10 minutes or less — Rush, Vortex, Flying Fish and Big Easy Bumpers were close to walk-on for most of the day. The spread between the busiest and quietest ride was 31 minutes, which is wide enough that where you chose to walk mattered more than when you arrived.
On a day at this level, the standard tactics are enough on their own. Arriving at opening and working through the headline coasters first would have cleared the biggest queues before they built, and there would have been no case for paying to skip anything. 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 10:00 to 18:00, covering 23 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.