How Busy Was Thorpe Park on Sunday, 16 August 2026?
Thorpe Park was moderately busy on Sunday, 16 August 2026. Across the day the average wait across all rides was 27 minutes, with the longest queue reaching 80 minutes for Storm Surge around 15:00. 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 80 minutes (around 15:00).
- Average across all rides: 27 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 | 19:00 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Storm Surge | – | 13 | 43 | 62 | 76 | 77 | 80 | 75 | 59 | 65 | 60 | 61 |
| Hyperia | – | 48 | 51 | 50 | 54 | 57 | 63 | 52 | 54 | 46 | 60 | 54 |
| Tidal Wave | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 33 | 66 | 52 | 45 | 49 |
| The Swarm | – | 23 | 43 | 48 | 49 | 46 | 41 | 68 | 26 | 22 | 15 | 38 |
| Nemesis Inferno | – | 14 | 33 | 43 | 47 | 51 | 48 | 34 | 30 | 20 | – | 36 |
| Stealth | – | 16 | 32 | 46 | 40 | 44 | 39 | 35 | 29 | 18 | – | 33 |
| SAW - The Ride | – | 15 | 38 | 43 | 42 | 45 | 51 | 15 | 18 | – | – | 33 |
| Ghost Train | – | – | – | 40 | 40 | 40 | 40 | 40 | 18 | 10 | 10 | 30 |
| Depth Charge | 5 | 13 | 28 | 36 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 36 | 27 | 28 | 20 | 29 |
| Colossus | – | 11 | 33 | 32 | 42 | 40 | 29 | 21 | 23 | 13 | 15 | 26 |
| Rush | – | 6 | 25 | 36 | 37 | 29 | 32 | 30 | 21 | 17 | 10 | 24 |
| Samurai | – | 8 | 23 | 28 | 25 | 29 | 28 | 26 | 17 | 16 | 20 | 22 |
| Flying Fish | – | 6 | 25 | 29 | 31 | 29 | 20 | 25 | 19 | 15 | 15 | 21 |
| Detonator | – | 5 | 18 | 25 | 29 | 31 | 32 | 20 | 18 | 9 | 10 | 20 |
| The Walking Dead©: The Ride | – | 5 | 18 | 20 | 31 | 31 | 28 | 19 | 5 | 7 | 5 | 17 |
| Big Easy Bumpers | – | 5 | 8 | 10 | 24 | 21 | 25 | 25 | 15 | 8 | 10 | 15 |
| High Striker | – | 5 | 6 | 14 | 16 | 19 | 28 | 16 | 5 | 7 | 5 | 12 |
| Mr Monkey's Banana Ride | – | 5 | 5 | 9 | 9 | 10 | 8 | 15 | 7 | 11 | 10 | 9 |
| Quantum | – | 5 | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 5 |
| Ready Player One 4D Experience | Age Rating 12A | – | – | – | 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 Sunday, 16 August 2026
Sunday 16 August was a moderately busy day at Thorpe Park. Across every ride we recorded, the average standby wait came out at 27 minutes, about 34% above the 20-minute average across every day we have recorded.
That makes it a busier-than-usual Sunday — other Sundays in the archive average 19 minutes. Against August as a whole, which averages 21 minutes, it was one of the heavier 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 34 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 Storm Surge at 80 minutes, around 15:00.
The rides holding the longest queues were Storm Surge, Hyperia and Tidal Wave — Storm Surge averaged 61 minutes across the whole day and touched 80 at its worst. Three 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, three rides averaged 10 minutes or less — Mr Monkey's Banana Ride, Quantum 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 56 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 10 hours of operation, from 10:00 to 19:00, covering 20 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.