How Busy Was Thorpe Park on Friday, 22 May 2026?
Thorpe Park was quiet on Friday, 22 May 2026. Across the day the average wait across all rides was 18 minutes, with the longest queue reaching 70 minutes for Hyperia around 12:00. 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 70 minutes (around 12:00).
- Average across all rides: 18 minutes.
- Quietest hour: 10:00 UK time.
| Ride | 09:00 | 10:00 | 11:00 | 12:00 | 13:00 | 14:00 | 15:00 | 16:00 | 17:00 | 18:00 | 00:00 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hyperia | – | 46 | 47 | 70 | 63 | 57 | 51 | 46 | 43 | 45 | – | 52 |
| Storm Surge | – | 12 | 40 | 49 | 53 | 57 | 49 | 43 | 28 | 30 | – | 40 |
| Tidal Wave | – | 5 | 22 | 45 | 48 | 45 | 42 | 38 | 22 | 10 | – | 31 |
| Nemesis Inferno | – | 11 | 40 | 49 | 46 | 40 | 36 | 21 | 9 | 5 | – | 29 |
| Colossus | – | 8 | 45 | 51 | 35 | 31 | 29 | 19 | 14 | 25 | – | 29 |
| The Swarm | – | 23 | 33 | 30 | 57 | 47 | 33 | 17 | 9 | 5 | – | 28 |
| SAW - The Ride | – | 14 | 40 | 49 | 44 | 37 | 25 | 19 | 10 | 5 | – | 27 |
| Stealth | – | 7 | 37 | 42 | 15 | 38 | 33 | 20 | 10 | 5 | – | 23 |
| Depth Charge | 14 | 9 | 17 | 25 | 26 | 29 | 26 | 25 | 15 | 15 | – | 20 |
| Rush | – | 7 | 27 | 33 | 27 | 27 | 20 | 12 | 8 | 10 | – | 19 |
| Samurai | – | 5 | 18 | 25 | 21 | 23 | 17 | 15 | 9 | 5 | – | 15 |
| Vortex | – | 5 | 23 | 30 | 20 | 22 | 15 | 8 | 6 | 5 | – | 15 |
| Ghost Train | – | – | – | 25 | 22 | 21 | 10 | 9 | 5 | 5 | – | 14 |
| Detonator | – | 5 | 9 | 23 | 21 | 17 | 18 | 10 | 8 | 10 | – | 13 |
| The Walking Dead©: The Ride | – | 5 | 25 | 26 | 18 | 10 | 10 | 5 | 5 | 5 | – | 12 |
| Flying Fish | – | 6 | 14 | 17 | 16 | 17 | 13 | 10 | 6 | 5 | – | 12 |
| Quantum | – | 5 | 8 | 17 | 6 | 8 | 8 | 5 | 5 | 5 | – | 7 |
| Big Easy Bumpers | – | 5 | 7 | 10 | 11 | 6 | 9 | 5 | 5 | 5 | – | 7 |
| Mr Monkey's Banana Ride | – | 6 | 6 | 6 | 7 | 5 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 5 | – | 6 |
| Dobble Tea Party | – | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | – | 5 |
| High Striker | – | 5 | 5 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 5 | 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 | 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, 22 May 2026
Friday 22 May was a quiet day at Thorpe Park. Across every ride we recorded, the average standby wait came out at 18 minutes, roughly 10% 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 heavier days of the month.
Queues followed the usual pattern: they built through the morning, peaked across the middle of the day (averaging 26 minutes between 12:00 and 15:00), then eased off through the afternoon. The quietest hour across the park was 10:00. The single longest queue we recorded was Hyperia at 70 minutes, around 12:00.
The rides holding the longest queues were Hyperia, Storm Surge and Tidal Wave — Hyperia averaged 52 minutes across the whole day and touched 70 at its worst. At the other end, seven rides averaged 10 minutes or less — Quantum, Big Easy Bumpers, Mr Monkey's Banana Ride and Dobble Tea Party were close to walk-on for most of the day. The spread between the busiest and quietest ride was 47 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.