How Busy Was Thorpe Park on Saturday, 5 September 2026?
Thorpe Park was moderately busy on Saturday, 5 September 2026. Across the day the average wait across all rides was 22 minutes, with the longest queue reaching 64 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 64 minutes (around 11:00).
- 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 | – | 49 | 64 | 57 | 57 | 60 | 62 | 55 | 56 | 60 | 58 |
| SAW - The Ride | – | – | 45 | 46 | 45 | 46 | 42 | 33 | 21 | 15 | 37 |
| Storm Surge | – | 7 | 23 | 37 | 56 | 45 | 54 | 51 | 41 | 20 | 37 |
| Nemesis Inferno | – | 22 | 42 | 42 | 45 | 53 | 45 | 36 | 27 | 10 | 36 |
| The Swarm | – | 27 | 51 | 43 | 43 | 44 | 35 | 33 | 15 | 10 | 33 |
| Stealth | – | 15 | 33 | 35 | 43 | 34 | 29 | 29 | 20 | 20 | 29 |
| Colossus | – | 26 | 53 | 35 | 35 | 30 | 24 | 13 | 21 | 15 | 28 |
| Samurai | – | 9 | 28 | 33 | 26 | 27 | 33 | 25 | 25 | 25 | 26 |
| Rush | – | 10 | 30 | 29 | 25 | 29 | 25 | 25 | 26 | 30 | 25 |
| Depth Charge | 5 | 9 | 21 | 18 | 20 | 24 | 28 | 28 | 30 | 35 | 22 |
| The Walking Dead©: The Ride | – | 6 | 18 | 34 | 26 | 20 | 24 | 19 | 18 | 15 | 20 |
| Ghost Train | – | – | – | 28 | 22 | 30 | 26 | 13 | 12 | 10 | 20 |
| Quantum | – | 5 | 17 | 18 | 26 | 22 | 29 | 25 | 10 | – | 19 |
| Detonator | – | 6 | 15 | 19 | 21 | 21 | 19 | 14 | 9 | – | 16 |
| Flying Fish | – | 5 | 16 | 18 | 20 | 19 | 15 | 18 | 15 | 10 | 15 |
| Big Easy Bumpers | – | 5 | 6 | 10 | 18 | 19 | 15 | 12 | 9 | 5 | 11 |
| Tidal Wave | – | 5 | 6 | 5 | 7 | 7 | 15 | 20 | 11 | 10 | 10 |
| Mr Monkey's Banana Ride | – | 5 | 8 | 10 | 10 | 8 | 10 | 7 | 5 | 5 | 8 |
| Dobble Tea Party | – | 5 | 6 | 5 | 6 | 6 | 7 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 6 |
| High Striker | – | 5 | 5 | 6 | 9 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 6 |
| 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, 5 September 2026
Saturday 5 September was a moderately busy day at Thorpe Park. Across every ride we recorded, the average standby wait came out at 22 minutes, which is close to the 21-minute average across every day in our archive.
That makes it a busier-than-usual Saturday — other Saturdays in the archive average 19 minutes. It also sits in line with September as a whole (21 minutes). 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 26 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 64 minutes, around 11:00.
The rides holding the longest queues were Hyperia, SAW - The Ride and Storm Surge — Hyperia averaged 58 minutes across the whole day and touched 64 at its worst. At the other end, five rides averaged 10 minutes or less — Tidal Wave, Mr Monkey's Banana Ride, Dobble Tea Party and High Striker were close to walk-on for most of the day. The spread between the busiest and quietest ride was 53 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 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.