How Busy Was Thorpe Park on Saturday, 29 August 2026?
Thorpe Park was quiet on Saturday, 29 August 2026. Across the day the average wait across all rides was 12 minutes, with the longest queue reaching 42 minutes for Hyperia 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: Hyperia at 42 minutes (around 11:00).
- Average across all rides: 12 minutes.
- Quietest hour: 19:00 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hyperia | – | 39 | 42 | 37 | 29 | 34 | 28 | 21 | 20 | 20 | 15 | 29 |
| Ghost Train | – | – | – | 30 | 27 | 32 | 28 | 25 | 16 | 6 | 20 | 23 |
| Nemesis Inferno | – | 8 | 26 | 30 | 16 | 35 | 27 | 18 | 9 | 5 | 5 | 18 |
| SAW - The Ride | – | 8 | 29 | 27 | 22 | 14 | 21 | 10 | 6 | 5 | – | 16 |
| Samurai | – | 6 | 11 | 22 | 15 | 20 | 27 | – | 19 | 15 | 5 | 16 |
| Storm Surge | – | 5 | 14 | 17 | 14 | 23 | 23 | 16 | 18 | 7 | 5 | 14 |
| Depth Charge | 5 | 14 | 18 | 9 | 13 | 20 | 12 | 14 | 14 | 15 | 15 | 14 |
| The Swarm | – | 19 | 16 | 13 | 13 | 11 | 19 | 14 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 12 |
| Rush | – | 5 | 20 | 12 | 11 | 19 | 17 | 11 | 10 | 5 | 5 | 12 |
| Colossus | – | 6 | 30 | 19 | 15 | 12 | 6 | 9 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 11 |
| Stealth | – | 7 | 10 | 16 | 10 | 18 | 17 | 11 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 11 |
| Big Easy Bumpers | – | 5 | 5 | 12 | 13 | 6 | 16 | 13 | 10 | 10 | 5 | 10 |
| The Walking Dead©: The Ride | – | 5 | 10 | 13 | 20 | 10 | 8 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 9 |
| Flying Fish | – | 5 | 9 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 15 | 12 | 10 | 7 | 5 | 9 |
| Detonator | – | 5 | 7 | 9 | 8 | 13 | 11 | 8 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 8 |
| Tidal Wave | – | 5 | 5 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 6 | 11 | 11 | 6 | 5 | 7 |
| Mr Monkey's Banana Ride | – | 5 | 5 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 7 | 7 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 6 |
| High Striker | – | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 10 | 7 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 6 |
| Quantum | – | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Dobble Tea Party | – | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 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 Saturday, 29 August 2026
Saturday 29 August was a quiet day at Thorpe Park. Across every ride we recorded, the average standby wait came out at 12 minutes, roughly 42% below the 21-minute average across every day we have recorded.
That makes it a quieter-than-usual Saturday — other Saturdays in the archive average 20 minutes. Against August as a whole, which averages 23 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 14 minutes between 12:00 and 15:00), then eased off through the afternoon. The quietest hour across the park was 19:00. The single longest queue we recorded was Hyperia at 42 minutes, around 11:00.
The rides holding the longest queues were Hyperia, Ghost Train and Nemesis Inferno — Hyperia averaged 29 minutes across the whole day and touched 42 at its worst. At the other end, ten rides averaged 10 minutes or less — Big Easy Bumpers, The Walking Dead©: The Ride, Flying Fish and Detonator were close to walk-on for most of the day.
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 10 hours of operation, from 10:00 to 19:00, covering 21 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.