How Busy Was Thorpe Park on Saturday, 23 May 2026?
Thorpe Park was quiet on Saturday, 23 May 2026. Across the day the average wait across all rides was 17 minutes, with the longest queue reaching 63 minutes for Storm Surge 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: Storm Surge at 63 minutes (around 12:00).
- Average across all rides: 17 minutes.
- Quietest hour: 20:00 UK time.
| Ride | 01:00 | 02:00 | 03:00 | 04:00 | 05:00 | 06:00 | 07:00 | 08:00 | 09:00 | 10:00 | 11:00 | 12:00 | 13:00 | 14:00 | 15:00 | 16:00 | 17:00 | 18:00 | 19:00 | 20:00 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Storm Surge | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 19 | 48 | 63 | 60 | 62 | 56 | 59 | 51 | 47 | 29 | 19 | 47 |
| Hyperia | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 56 | 48 | 50 | 40 | 40 | 41 | 35 | 32 | 25 | 27 | 20 | 38 |
| Tidal Wave | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 8 | 37 | 39 | 46 | 49 | 52 | 39 | 39 | 17 | 8 | 5 | 31 |
| SAW - The Ride | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 25 | 37 | 43 | 40 | 33 | 39 | 34 | 28 | 18 | 12 | 6 | 29 |
| Nemesis Inferno | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 19 | 36 | 36 | 36 | 33 | 33 | 29 | 23 | 18 | 7 | 5 | 25 |
| The Swarm | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 23 | 38 | 37 | 34 | 36 | 32 | 29 | 19 | 9 | 5 | 5 | 24 |
| Stealth | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 13 | 31 | 30 | 30 | 36 | 24 | 36 | 24 | 19 | 11 | 7 | 24 |
| Depth Charge | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 5 | 10 | 19 | 29 | 38 | 30 | 33 | 28 | 41 | 21 | 17 | 12 | 24 |
| Ghost Train | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 34 | 29 | 25 | 28 | 19 | 13 | 7 | 9 | 10 | 19 |
| The Walking Dead©: The Ride | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 5 | 29 | 25 | 26 | 23 | 21 | 18 | 13 | 12 | 5 | 5 | 17 |
| Colossus | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 10 | 30 | 32 | 22 | 22 | 19 | 13 | 10 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 16 |
| Samurai | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 8 | 19 | 22 | 18 | 17 | 21 | 18 | 18 | 16 | 10 | 9 | 16 |
| Rush | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 6 | 21 | 19 | 15 | 19 | 19 | 15 | 12 | 9 | 6 | 5 | 13 |
| Vortex | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 6 | 23 | 10 | 17 | 19 | 20 | 19 | 15 | 9 | 5 | 5 | 13 |
| Detonator | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 6 | 15 | 14 | 15 | 20 | 15 | 13 | 13 | 7 | 5 | 5 | 12 |
| Flying Fish | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 8 | 8 | 11 | 10 | 12 | 9 | 10 | 8 | 11 | 5 | 5 | 9 |
| Big Easy Bumpers | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 5 | 5 | 10 | 15 | 14 | 15 | 11 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 9 |
| Quantum | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 5 | 6 | 14 | 9 | 13 | 17 | 8 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 8 |
| Mr Monkey's Banana Ride | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 5 | 5 | 8 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 6 |
| Dobble Tea Party | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| High Striker | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 5 |
| Ready Player One 4D Experience | Age Rating 12A | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 5 | 5 | 5 | 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 Saturday, 23 May 2026
Saturday 23 May was a quiet day at Thorpe Park. Across every ride we recorded, the average standby wait came out at 17 minutes, roughly 15% below the 20-minute average across every day we have recorded.
That makes it a quieter-than-usual Saturday — other Saturdays in the archive average 19 minutes. It also sits in line with May as a whole (16 minutes). Weekends are consistently the busiest part of the week here, so this is the harder end of the spectrum to plan around.
Queues followed the usual pattern: they built through the morning, peaked across the middle of the day (averaging 24 minutes between 12:00 and 15:00), then eased off through the afternoon. The quietest hour across the park was 20:00. The single longest queue we recorded was Storm Surge at 63 minutes, around 12:00.
The rides holding the longest queues were Storm Surge, Hyperia and Tidal Wave — Storm Surge averaged 47 minutes across the whole day and touched 63 at its worst. At the other end, eight rides averaged 10 minutes or less — Flying Fish, Big Easy Bumpers, Quantum and Mr Monkey's Banana Ride were close to walk-on for most of the day. The spread between the busiest and quietest ride was 42 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 11 hours of operation, from 10:00 to 20:00, 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.