How Busy Was Thorpe Park on Tuesday, 18 August 2026?
Thorpe Park was moderately busy on Tuesday, 18 August 2026. Across the day the average wait across all rides was 27 minutes, with the longest queue reaching 73 minutes for Colossus around 11:00. 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: Colossus at 73 minutes (around 11:00).
- 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 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hyperia | – | 65 | 69 | 72 | 73 | 69 | 67 | 68 | 57 | 49 | 65 |
| Storm Surge | – | 7 | 45 | 53 | 69 | 65 | 57 | 64 | 56 | 58 | 53 |
| Nemesis Inferno | – | 35 | 55 | 54 | 59 | 53 | 46 | 54 | 34 | 18 | 45 |
| SAW - The Ride | – | 22 | 48 | 50 | 54 | 52 | 49 | 40 | 31 | 18 | 40 |
| Colossus | – | 12 | 73 | 48 | 72 | 41 | 34 | 31 | 16 | 10 | 37 |
| The Swarm | – | 25 | 49 | 47 | 42 | 47 | 40 | 38 | 21 | 16 | 36 |
| Stealth | – | 12 | 40 | 40 | 39 | 44 | 47 | 29 | 25 | 21 | 33 |
| Ghost Train | – | – | – | 36 | 41 | 40 | 35 | 35 | 21 | 16 | 32 |
| Rush | – | 9 | 38 | 36 | 38 | 42 | 29 | 34 | 29 | 15 | 30 |
| The Walking Dead©: The Ride | – | 5 | 27 | 35 | 47 | 29 | 40 | 27 | 27 | 15 | 28 |
| Samurai | – | 10 | 28 | 37 | 32 | 31 | 34 | 33 | 24 | 17 | 27 |
| Depth Charge | 7 | 11 | 23 | 30 | 25 | 30 | 33 | 28 | 28 | 25 | 24 |
| Detonator | – | 7 | 24 | 29 | 33 | 33 | 27 | 25 | 21 | 10 | 23 |
| Flying Fish | – | 6 | 20 | 24 | 20 | 20 | 17 | 25 | 11 | 10 | 17 |
| Big Easy Bumpers | – | 5 | 11 | 18 | 18 | 16 | 20 | 20 | 10 | 10 | 14 |
| Quantum | – | 5 | 11 | 19 | 12 | 15 | 12 | 13 | 10 | 10 | 12 |
| High Striker | – | 5 | 6 | 15 | 7 | 5 | 22 | 18 | 12 | 5 | 11 |
| Dobble Tea Party | – | 5 | 7 | 14 | 14 | 13 | 6 | 10 | 10 | 5 | 9 |
| Mr Monkey's Banana Ride | – | 5 | 9 | 10 | 10 | 12 | 10 | 8 | 6 | 5 | 8 |
| 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 Tuesday, 18 August 2026
Tuesday 18 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 Tuesday — other Tuesdays in the archive average 21 minutes. Against August as a whole, which averages 22 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 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 Colossus at 73 minutes, around 11:00.
The rides holding the longest queues were Hyperia, Storm Surge and Nemesis Inferno — Hyperia averaged 65 minutes across the whole day and touched 73 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 — Dobble Tea Party, Mr Monkey's Banana Ride 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 60 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 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.