How Busy Was Thorpe Park on Thursday, 21 May 2026?
Thorpe Park was exceptionally quiet on Thursday, 21 May 2026. Across the day the average wait across all rides was 10 minutes, with the longest queue reaching 42 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 42 minutes (around 11:00).
- Average across all rides: 10 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 | 42 | 41 | 29 | 24 | 26 | 21 | 15 | 29 |
| Storm Surge | 5 | 17 | 19 | 30 | 29 | 29 | 21 | 10 | 20 |
| SAW - The Ride | 16 | 20 | 31 | 23 | 17 | 22 | 5 | 5 | 17 |
| Nemesis Inferno | 15 | 23 | 19 | 19 | 15 | 9 | 5 | 5 | 14 |
| Colossus | 5 | 25 | 27 | 11 | 21 | 11 | 5 | 5 | 14 |
| The Swarm | 8 | 27 | 20 | 14 | 15 | 9 | 5 | 5 | 13 |
| Stealth | 6 | 22 | 15 | 15 | 18 | 14 | 8 | 5 | 13 |
| Rush | 8 | 14 | 13 | 12 | 10 | 13 | 7 | 5 | 10 |
| Ghost Train | – | – | 16 | 17 | 10 | 8 | 5 | 5 | 10 |
| Vortex | 5 | 17 | 10 | 11 | 10 | 10 | 8 | 5 | 10 |
| The Walking Dead©: The Ride | 5 | 12 | 8 | 20 | 15 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 9 |
| Samurai | 5 | 15 | 13 | 9 | 10 | 13 | 5 | 5 | 9 |
| Depth Charge | 5 | 6 | 5 | 6 | 16 | 16 | 9 | 10 | 9 |
| Detonator | 5 | 9 | 11 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 5 | 5 | 8 |
| Flying Fish | 5 | 10 | 8 | 5 | 10 | 10 | 8 | 10 | 8 |
| Tidal Wave | 5 | 6 | 6 | 9 | 12 | 9 | 5 | 5 | 7 |
| Big Easy Bumpers | 5 | 6 | 6 | 8 | 10 | 9 | 5 | 5 | 7 |
| Quantum | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Dobble Tea Party | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Mr Monkey's Banana Ride | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| High Striker | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Ready Player One 4D Experience | Age Rating 12A | – | – | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | – | 5 |
| The Playground | 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 Thursday, 21 May 2026
Thursday 21 May was an exceptionally quiet day at Thorpe Park. Across every ride we recorded, the average standby wait came out at 10 minutes, roughly 50% below the 20-minute average across every day we have recorded.
That makes it a quieter-than-usual Thursday — other Thursdays in the archive average 20 minutes. Against May as a whole, which averages 16 minutes, it was one of the lighter days of the month.
Queues followed the usual pattern: they built through the morning, peaked across the middle of the day (averaging 12 minutes between 12:00 and 15:00), then eased off through the afternoon. The quietest hour across the park was 17:00. The single longest queue we recorded was Hyperia at 42 minutes, around 11:00.
The rides holding the longest queues were Hyperia, Storm Surge and SAW - The Ride — Hyperia averaged 29 minutes across the whole day and touched 42 at its worst. At the other end, 16 rides averaged 10 minutes or less — Rush, Ghost Train, Vortex and The Walking Dead©: The Ride 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 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.