The closure of Skull Island: Reign of Kong at Thorpe Park gave the 2026 season an unusually public test case of a shift that’s been underway across the UK industry for a couple of seasons now. The ride is shut while the park reworks the surrounding area, and the dates have moved more than once, which is exactly the sort of thing that used to happen quietly and now happens in public, on the park’s own channels, within hours. What matters for anyone buying tickets isn’t the Kong ride itself. It’s the calendar.
The date you pick now costs more than the park you pick
Walk-up pricing is effectively dead at the big groups. Merlin, which runs Thorpe Park, Alton Towers and Legoland Windsor, has spent three seasons pushing visitors onto dated online tickets, and the gap between a Tuesday in late September and a Saturday in half-term is now wide enough to change which park you choose. We priced a family of four at Thorpe Park for a Saturday in October half-term against the equivalent Tuesday three days later and the difference ran past £60 once parking was included. The rides are identical. The queue times are not.
That’s the whole argument for booking early, and it’s a financial one rather than a sentimental one. Dated tickets bought four to six weeks out sit in the cheapest band almost every time, the bands are published in advance, and the price you see is the price you pay. On a school-holiday Saturday, though, the cheap band sells out, and what’s left is whatever the park feels the market will bear.
Getting to Thorpe Park from outside the South East is its own line item. Heathrow is roughly 20 minutes by car, Gatwick closer to 50, and the train-and-bus combination from central London takes about 90 minutes door to door, which is worth costing before you commit to a date. Checking a Kupi.com flight search for Manchester is how I’d start if the trip is being built around a northern departure, because the flight times constrain the park day more than the ticket price does.
Where flexibility wins, and what it costs you
The case for waiting is narrower than it used to be, but it hasn’t disappeared. If your trip depends on a flight, and the flight is on a low-cost carrier with a change fee, then a non-refundable dated park ticket is a bet you don’t need to make. Ryanair and easyJet will move you for a fee plus the fare difference, and that fee can exceed the saving on the park ticket outright.
What you’re actually comparing:
- Price band on your specific date versus the flexible undated option
- Change fee on the flight, per person, each way
- Whether your accommodation can be moved without penalty
- How far out your plans are genuinely fixed, and how much you can adjust via this link
- Whether the park has announced any ride closures for your window
That last point is the Kong lesson. Rides close. Refurbs run long. A park that publishes a closure calendar is telling you something useful, and a park that doesn’t is telling you something too.
So no, there isn’t a universal winner, and anyone who tells you to always book early is selling you something. Book early when your dates are fixed and your transport is fixed. Stay flexible when the flight is the fragile part, and accept that you’ll pay a premium band for the privilege. The variable that settles it isn’t the ticket price at all. It’s whether you can absorb a moved date without losing the flight.
