How Busy Was Thorpe Park on Friday, 4 September 2026?
Thorpe Park was quiet on Friday, 4 September 2026. Across the day the average wait across all rides was 13 minutes, with the longest queue reaching 68 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 68 minutes (around 11:00).
- Average across all rides: 13 minutes.
- Quietest hour: 18:00 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 | – | 45 | 68 | 47 | 55 | 50 | 40 | 34 | 29 | 15 | 43 |
| Nemesis Inferno | – | 23 | 40 | 39 | 31 | 30 | 26 | 21 | 10 | – | 28 |
| SAW - The Ride | – | – | 31 | 44 | 37 | 36 | 24 | 16 | 8 | 5 | 25 |
| The Swarm | – | 28 | 41 | 24 | 15 | 22 | 17 | 12 | 8 | 10 | 20 |
| Stealth | – | 10 | 34 | 25 | 16 | 19 | 22 | 12 | 5 | 5 | 16 |
| Ghost Train | – | – | – | 17 | 29 | 18 | 13 | 12 | 10 | 10 | 16 |
| Samurai | – | 13 | 23 | 21 | 16 | 20 | 16 | 13 | 8 | 5 | 15 |
| Colossus | – | 18 | 35 | 24 | 14 | 10 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 14 |
| Rush | – | 7 | 22 | 12 | 14 | 13 | 11 | 8 | 7 | 5 | 11 |
| Detonator | – | 7 | 13 | 11 | 8 | 9 | 11 | 9 | 5 | 5 | 9 |
| Storm Surge | – | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 12 | 15 | 15 | 15 | 9 |
| Depth Charge | 5 | 5 | 8 | 8 | 6 | 8 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 5 | 8 |
| The Walking Dead©: The Ride | – | – | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 16 | 10 | 6 | 5 | 7 |
| Flying Fish | – | 6 | 10 | 7 | 7 | 10 | 6 | 7 | 5 | 5 | 7 |
| Big Easy Bumpers | – | 5 | 5 | 5 | 9 | 6 | 5 | 8 | 6 | 5 | 6 |
| Quantum | – | 5 | 7 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Tidal Wave | – | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 6 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Dobble Tea Party | – | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Mr Monkey's Banana Ride | – | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| High Striker | – | 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 |
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 Friday, 4 September 2026
Friday 4 September was a quiet day at Thorpe Park. Across every ride we recorded, the average standby wait came out at 13 minutes, roughly 38% below the 21-minute average across every day we have recorded.
That makes it a quieter-than-usual Friday — other Fridays in the archive average 22 minutes. Against September as a whole, which averages 23 minutes, it was one of the lighter days of the month.
Unusually, the heaviest queueing came in the morning rather than at lunchtime — the pre-noon average of 15 minutes was the highest stretch of the day. Days like this normally mean a burst of early arrivals that thinned out rather than growing. The quietest hour across the park was 18:00. The single longest queue we recorded was Hyperia at 68 minutes, around 11:00.
The rides holding the longest queues were Hyperia, Nemesis Inferno and SAW - The Ride — Hyperia averaged 43 minutes across the whole day and touched 68 at its worst. At the other end, twelve rides averaged 10 minutes or less — Detonator, Storm Surge, Depth Charge and The Walking Dead©: The Ride were close to walk-on for most of the day. The spread between the busiest and quietest ride was 38 minutes, which is wide enough that where you chose to walk mattered more than when you arrived.
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 9 hours of operation, from 10:00 to 18:00, 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.