How Busy Was Thorpe Park on Saturday, 18 July 2026?
Thorpe Park was moderately busy on Saturday, 18 July 2026. Across the day the average wait across all rides was 22 minutes, with the longest queue reaching 65 minutes for Hyperia around 16:00. 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 65 minutes (around 16:00).
- Average across all rides: 22 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 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hyperia | – | 64 | 63 | 56 | 61 | 57 | 56 | 65 | 43 | 40 | 56 |
| Storm Surge | – | 11 | 39 | 59 | 55 | 57 | 60 | 52 | 47 | 40 | 47 |
| Colossus | – | – | – | – | 48 | 65 | – | 41 | 44 | 15 | 43 |
| SAW - The Ride | – | 22 | 46 | 49 | 49 | 41 | 46 | 35 | 31 | 10 | 37 |
| The Swarm | – | 29 | 43 | 40 | 26 | 34 | 31 | 35 | – | – | 34 |
| Nemesis Inferno | – | 20 | 42 | 45 | 40 | 25 | 30 | 24 | 22 | 25 | 30 |
| Tidal Wave | – | 5 | 15 | 30 | 33 | 51 | 45 | 41 | 24 | 5 | 28 |
| Ghost Train | – | – | – | 32 | 34 | 26 | 29 | 26 | 20 | 20 | 27 |
| Stealth | – | 12 | 38 | 42 | 27 | 30 | 31 | 19 | 13 | 10 | 25 |
| Samurai | – | – | 27 | 29 | 32 | 31 | 28 | 21 | 23 | 10 | 25 |
| Rush | – | 9 | 30 | 35 | 31 | 18 | 27 | 28 | 21 | 25 | 25 |
| The Walking Dead©: The Ride | – | 5 | 28 | 34 | 38 | 19 | 36 | 34 | 14 | 10 | 24 |
| Depth Charge | 5 | 7 | 22 | 26 | 28 | 27 | 28 | 23 | 29 | 25 | 22 |
| Detonator | – | 6 | 17 | 25 | 26 | 16 | 15 | 19 | 8 | 5 | 15 |
| Flying Fish | – | 9 | 13 | 20 | 20 | 15 | 15 | 15 | 6 | 5 | 13 |
| Big Easy Bumpers | – | 5 | 6 | 16 | 13 | 10 | 14 | 8 | 11 | 10 | 10 |
| Mr Monkey's Banana Ride | – | 5 | 9 | 6 | 8 | 9 | 6 | 8 | 5 | – | 7 |
| Quantum | – | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Vortex | – | – | 5 | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 5 |
| Dobble Tea Party | – | 5 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| High Striker | – | 5 | 6 | 7 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Ready Player One 4D Experience | Age Rating 12A | – | – | – | 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, 18 July 2026
Saturday 18 July was a moderately busy day at Thorpe Park. Across every ride we recorded, the average standby wait came out at 22 minutes, about 11% above the 20-minute average across every day we have recorded.
That makes it a busier-than-usual Saturday — other Saturdays in the archive average 18 minutes. Against July as a whole, which averages 27 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 followed the usual pattern: they built through the morning, peaked across the middle of the day (averaging 28 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 65 minutes, around 16:00.
The rides holding the longest queues were Hyperia, Storm Surge and Colossus — Hyperia averaged 56 minutes across the whole day and touched 65 at its worst. At the other end, seven rides averaged 10 minutes or less — Big Easy Bumpers, Mr Monkey's Banana Ride, Quantum and Vortex were close to walk-on for most of the day. The spread between the busiest and quietest ride was 51 minutes, which is wide enough that where you chose to walk mattered more than when you arrived.
This is the level at which planning starts to pay. Rope-dropping the two rides with the longest queues, eating before 12:00, and saving re-rides for the final hour would each have been worth roughly one extra ride over the day. 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 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.