How Busy Was Thorpe Park on Tuesday, 15 September 2026?
Thorpe Park was exceptionally quiet on Tuesday, 15 September 2026. Across the day the average wait across all rides was 10 minutes, with the longest queue reaching 40 minutes for Hyperia around 17:00. 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 40 minutes (around 17:00).
- Average across all rides: 10 minutes.
- Quietest hour: 10:00 UK time.
| Ride | 10:00 | 11:00 | 12:00 | 13:00 | 14:00 | 15:00 | 16:00 | 17:00 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hyperia | 29 | 35 | 33 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 36 | 40 | 36 |
| Colossus | – | 29 | 25 | 16 | 16 | 9 | 10 | 10 | 16 |
| Nemesis Inferno | 8 | 20 | 24 | 21 | 22 | 18 | 8 | 5 | 16 |
| The Swarm | 11 | 25 | 17 | 13 | 10 | 18 | 10 | 10 | 14 |
| SAW - The Ride | 7 | 26 | 19 | 13 | 11 | 10 | 11 | 10 | 13 |
| Stealth | 6 | 15 | 14 | 11 | – | – | – | – | 12 |
| Samurai | 5 | 14 | 17 | 14 | 10 | 13 | 12 | 5 | 11 |
| Rush | 7 | 16 | 9 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 10 | 10 | 10 |
| Ghost Train | – | – | – | 14 | 15 | – | 5 | 5 | 10 |
| Detonator | 5 | 9 | 11 | 10 | – | – | – | – | 9 |
| Storm Surge | 5 | 6 | 7 | 6 | 12 | 17 | 11 | 10 | 9 |
| The Walking Dead©: The Ride | 5 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 5 | 5 | 6 |
| Tidal Wave | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 10 | 5 | 5 | 6 |
| Big Easy Bumpers | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 9 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 6 |
| Quantum | 5 | 5 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 7 | – | 5 |
| Flying Fish | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Dobble Tea Party | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Depth Charge | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Mr Monkey's Banana Ride | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| High Striker | 5 | 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, 15 September 2026
Tuesday 15 September was an exceptionally quiet day at Thorpe Park. Across every ride we recorded, the average standby wait came out at 10 minutes, roughly 51% below the 20-minute average across every day we have recorded.
That makes it a quieter-than-usual Tuesday — other Tuesdays in the archive average 22 minutes. Against September as a whole, which averages 16 minutes, it was one of the lighter days of the month.
Queues stayed remarkably level all day rather than showing the usual lunchtime hump — there was no obviously good or bad hour to be walking around the park. The quietest hour across the park was 10:00. The single longest queue we recorded was Hyperia at 40 minutes, around 17:00.
The rides holding the longest queues were Hyperia, Colossus and Nemesis Inferno — Hyperia averaged 36 minutes across the whole day. At the other end, 13 rides averaged 10 minutes or less — Rush, Ghost Train, Detonator and Storm Surge were close to walk-on for most of the day. The spread between the busiest and quietest ride was 31 minutes, which is wide enough that where you chose to walk mattered more than when you arrived.
A day like this is what people mean when they talk about the park being empty. On this level of demand there is little to plan around: you can ride in whatever order you like, Fastrack would have been wasted money, and re-rides are essentially free. 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 8 hours of operation, from 10:00 to 17:00, 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.