How Busy Was Thorpe Park on Friday, 18 September 2026?
Thorpe Park was quiet on Friday, 18 September 2026. Across the day the average wait across all rides was 15 minutes, with the longest queue reaching 71 minutes for Hyperia around 15:00. 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 71 minutes (around 15:00).
- Average across all rides: 15 minutes.
- Quietest hour: 16:00 UK time.
| Ride | 10:00 | 11:00 | 12:00 | 13:00 | 14:00 | 15:00 | 16:00 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hyperia | 48 | 65 | 56 | 59 | 55 | 71 | 62 | 59 |
| SAW - The Ride | 25 | 45 | 43 | 38 | 26 | 20 | 10 | 30 |
| Colossus | 8 | 50 | 38 | 34 | 24 | 21 | 6 | 26 |
| Nemesis Inferno | 23 | 36 | 32 | 32 | 25 | 23 | 10 | 26 |
| The Swarm | 19 | 40 | 35 | 21 | 20 | 18 | 11 | 23 |
| The Walking Dead©: The Ride | – | 19 | 33 | 28 | 22 | 24 | 8 | 22 |
| Ghost Train | – | – | 23 | 16 | 19 | 13 | 14 | 17 |
| Samurai | 11 | 25 | 14 | 14 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 13 |
| Rush | 6 | 20 | 15 | 10 | 11 | 9 | 7 | 11 |
| Storm Surge | 5 | 12 | 18 | 10 | 11 | 6 | 5 | 10 |
| Detonator | 5 | 12 | 11 | 7 | 10 | 8 | 5 | 8 |
| Depth Charge | 5 | 8 | 5 | 6 | 13 | 10 | 10 | 8 |
| Quantum | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Tidal Wave | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Flying Fish | 5 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Dobble Tea Party | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Mr Monkey's Banana Ride | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Big Easy Bumpers | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| High Striker | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Ready Player One 4D Experience | Age Rating 12A | – | – | 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, 18 September 2026
Friday 18 September was a quiet day at Thorpe Park. Across every ride we recorded, the average standby wait came out at 15 minutes, roughly 26% below the 20-minute average across every day we have recorded.
That makes it a quieter-than-usual Friday — other Fridays in the archive average 21 minutes. It also sits in line with September as a whole (16 minutes).
Queues followed the usual pattern: they built through the morning, peaked across the middle of the day (averaging 16 minutes between 12:00 and 15:00), then eased off through the afternoon. The quietest hour across the park was 16:00. The single longest queue we recorded was Hyperia at 71 minutes, around 15:00.
The rides holding the longest queues were Hyperia, SAW - The Ride and Colossus — Hyperia averaged 59 minutes across the whole day and touched 71 at its worst. At the other end, eleven rides averaged 10 minutes or less — Storm Surge, Detonator, Depth Charge and Quantum were close to walk-on for most of the day. The spread between the busiest and quietest ride was 54 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 7 hours of operation, from 10:00 to 16:00, 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.