How Busy Was Thorpe Park on Thursday, 16 July 2026?
Thorpe Park was very busy on Thursday, 16 July 2026. Across the day the average wait across all rides was 41 minutes, with the longest queue reaching 170 minutes for Hyperia around 13:00. 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 170 minutes (around 13:00).
- Average across all rides: 41 minutes.
- Quietest hour: 17:00 UK time.
| Ride | 09:00 | 10:00 | 11:00 | 12:00 | 13:00 | 14:00 | 15:00 | 16:00 | 17:00 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hyperia | – | 119 | 163 | 164 | 170 | 120 | 108 | 116 | 104 | 133 |
| The Swarm | – | 54 | 109 | 110 | 105 | 88 | 62 | 33 | 17 | 72 |
| SAW - The Ride | – | 40 | 105 | 101 | 100 | 88 | 56 | 38 | 21 | 69 |
| Storm Surge | – | 21 | 81 | 94 | 102 | 84 | 81 | 48 | 34 | 68 |
| Nemesis Inferno | – | 26 | 94 | 123 | 88 | 81 | 55 | 31 | 11 | 64 |
| Tidal Wave | – | 8 | 72 | 86 | 90 | 88 | 86 | 38 | 16 | 61 |
| Colossus | – | 25 | 82 | 101 | 82 | 81 | 48 | 34 | 15 | 59 |
| Stealth | – | 25 | 83 | 81 | 89 | 66 | 43 | 23 | 19 | 54 |
| The Walking Dead©: The Ride | – | 12 | 62 | 90 | 78 | 61 | 58 | 27 | 8 | 50 |
| Rush | – | 8 | 60 | 60 | 57 | 49 | 41 | 29 | 24 | 41 |
| Ghost Train | – | – | – | 63 | 23 | 54 | 27 | 17 | 14 | 33 |
| Samurai | – | 10 | 47 | 55 | 45 | 34 | 32 | 21 | 11 | 32 |
| Quantum | – | 5 | 5 | 5 | 20 | 50 | 50 | 50 | 50 | 29 |
| Detonator | – | 7 | 40 | 42 | 38 | 42 | 29 | 16 | 9 | 28 |
| Depth Charge | 5 | 8 | 34 | 40 | 40 | 43 | 35 | 14 | 7 | 25 |
| Flying Fish | – | 8 | 36 | 28 | 23 | 39 | 23 | 15 | 8 | 23 |
| Big Easy Bumpers | – | 5 | 19 | 23 | 24 | 26 | 19 | 13 | 5 | 17 |
| Mr Monkey's Banana Ride | – | 6 | 16 | 15 | 18 | 18 | 14 | 10 | 7 | 13 |
| Dobble Tea Party | – | 5 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 14 | 11 | 5 | 5 | 9 |
| High Striker | – | 5 | 7 | 6 | 11 | 13 | 9 | 8 | 5 | 8 |
| Vortex | – | – | – | – | 5 | – | – | 5 | – | 5 |
| Ready Player One 4D Experience | Age Rating 12A | – | – | – | – | – | 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, 16 July 2026
Thursday 16 July was a very busy day at Thorpe Park. Across every ride we recorded, the average standby wait came out at 41 minutes, about 108% above the 20-minute average across every day we have recorded.
That makes it a busier-than-usual Thursday — other Thursdays in the archive average 18 minutes. Against July as a whole, which averages 26 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 59 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 170 minutes, around 13:00.
The rides holding the longest queues were Hyperia, The Swarm and SAW - The Ride — Hyperia averaged 133 minutes across the whole day and touched 170 at its worst. Nine rides averaged 45 minutes or more, which is the point at which a day starts to feel like queueing rather than riding. At the other end, four rides averaged 10 minutes or less — Dobble Tea Party, High Striker, Vortex and Ready Player One 4D Experience | Age Rating 12A were close to walk-on for most of the day. The spread between the busiest and quietest ride was 128 minutes, which is wide enough that where you chose to walk mattered more than when you arrived.
Days like this are the hardest to enjoy without preparation. Arriving before the gates open is close to essential, the middle of the day is best avoided on the headline coasters entirely, and if you were ever going to buy Fastrack, this is the kind of day it is actually worth it on. 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 and our analysis of whether Fastrack is worth it.
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.