2 Quick Questions for 1st time London Travelers

Unfortunately, your trip to Lancaster Gate station (now back open again) needs 2 changes, Heathrow to Earl's Court on the Picadilly line (dark blue) then change to the District line (green) a couple of stops towards Paddington, getting off at Notting Hill Gate and transferring to the Central line (red) another couple of stops towards Epping and you're there... Phew! It sounds much worse than it actually is. Take your time and ask ppl if you need help. Good luck.

Re the Oyster card; you should be putting an amount of money on it. As I understand it, the visitor oyster has a non-refundable deposit while the deposit on the regular card is refundable. It's only a few pounds per card.
Below are a couple links

https://tfl.gov.uk/fares-and-payments/oyster/what-is-oyster
https://tfl.gov.uk/travel-information/visiting-london/visitor-oyster-card

The Tube station at Heathrow is extremely easy to find, just follow the abundant signs.

2) The main differences between the Visitor Oyster and the regular one are:

You pay a deposit on the cards. £3 for the Visitor, £5 for the regular. The visitor is non refundable, but never expires so you can use it again on your next visit. The regular is fully refundable along with whatever amount of money is left on it when you are done riding transit in London.

You can add transit passes to the regular Oyster but not the Visitor. Sometimes those passes may give you better pricing than the Oyster alone.

If you buy an Oyster anywhere except in London, it is a Visitor Oyster.

If you buy an Oyster and have it delivered, there will be a shipping charge that can be quite expensive depending on where you get it. The regular Oyster can be bought at Heathrow at the Tube station there from the ticket machine. The lines are usually short and move quickly. No shipping charge if you wait and get it there.

How they are the same:

The Oyster is not charged in days. It is charged by rides. So you put £20 or so on it and you ride until it tells you you need more funds. You never pay more total for the day for all of your rides using the Oyster than you would buying a daily pass or if you use it for a full week a weekly pass. The Oyster also covers you if you stray into a different fare zone. The transit passes are for limited zones and don't so you have to pay the extra fare if you happen to go outside the paid zones.

You can add money to the Oyster at almost every stop on the Tube lines. Just look for the ticket machines. I usually put all of my loose change onto my Oyster when it begins to run low so I am not carrying around all those coins.

If you can buy a pop from a vending machine in the USA, you can easily buy the regular Oyster card upon arriving in the UK. The machines are incredibly easy to find.

Stephen, The standard tube map is here: http://content.tfl.gov.uk/standard-tube-map.pdf
It is posted at all tube stations, and also available as a pocket size map.

1) The only catch with Lancaster Gate tube station (Lancaster station is in the town of Lancaster, ~200 miles north of London) is that you will have to change twice. Once at Earl's court onto the district line (green), and again at Notting Hill Gate onto the central line (red).
This will be easier if you do not have heavy luggage. But it is well signposted, all the signs are colour coded with the line colours.

The London Underground stations at Heathrow (different ones for different terminals, see map) are well signposted.

2) The Oyster card is a stored value card, an electronic wallet. You can buy them at Heathrow tube stations. Just buy one per person with say £20 of credit on it.
On the tube, you zap the card to get in and out through the ticket barrier, and on the buses only when you get on the bus. A small sign shows how much credit you have left. When it runs out, fill it up again.
With an Oyster card you always get the cheapest fares, usually about 2/3 of the cost of buying individual tickets or buying a weekly ticket.
See here for more info: https://tfl.gov.uk/fares-and-payments/oyster/what-is-oyster

When you leave you can hand in your Oyster card and claim back unused money, or keep them for your next trip.

While the tube will be cheapest, your hotel is only about a 10 minute walk from Paddington. You could take the Heathrow Express or Connect to Paddington and then walk. There is a discount on the HEX if you buy it in advance.

Navigating steps in Tube stations with luggage isn't easy. The Heathrow Express, then walking to hotel from Paddington sounds better to me. Or take a taxi from Paddington to hotel.

Buy your Heathrow Express tickets now ( 30+ days in advance) and they will be much cheaper.

If you are daunted by all this talk of tube changes and the Heathrow Express, you may want to use a minicab. That's Brit-speak for a prebooked car service, which is cheaper than a taxi and will take you right from Heathrow to the door of your hotel. I have no personal experience with them, but Simply Airports, Just Airports, and Blackberry Cars are three services often recommended. You can go to their websites and put in your destination address and the kind of car you need, and get an exact price quote. Note that Just Airports has a substantially lower price for cash compared with credit card (don't know about the others).

If you do want to take the Heathrow Express, definitely buy your ticket in advance for the best price - it's much more expensive bought on the day of travel.

Since there are two of you, you may want to take advantage of the Two For One offers from Days Out. In order to do this, you wouldn't get an Oyster Card, but instead would get a Seven Day paper TravelCard from a rail (not a tube) station. Details here: https://www.tripadvisor.com/Travel-g186338-c195600/London:United-Kingdom:2.4.1.Travelcards.Step.By.Step.html

and here: https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Travel-g186338-c133479/London:United-Kingdom:Paper.And.Oyster.Travelcards.2.4.1.Offers.html

Take the Heathrow Express to Paddington Station, it's a 10 minute walk tour hotel. It you go to Heathrowexpress.com you can purchase advance tickets which will save you money.

Definitely budget and take the Heathrow Express or Connect to Paddington.

My preferred accommodation is near Paddington and after awaking from the red eye from LA I'm not one to dilly dally on the tube for an hour to get into London, especially when it requires changing trains.

As already noted, GET your EXPRESS or CONNECT tickets now. Much cheaper. Trains are always on time, clean, safe and whisk you to Paddington in 15-25 minutes.

Once at Paddington head towards the Starbucks. There are National West Bank ATMS close by. Use a debit card to withdraw 25-30 pounds. Enough so you can purchase your refundable Oyster Cards, grab a coffee and be on your way out the door to walk to your hotel.

Lastly double check the TFL website regarding Lancaster Gate Station. I know last Fall it was closing this year so they could put in new elevators. Suspect the repairs are completed but always wise to check.

Have a great first visit. GREAT city to explore and enjoy.

My family and I took our first trip to London a few weeks ago, and I can say, the tube is exceedingly easy to navigate. We took it from Heathrow, and even with changes, it was a snap. Take you're time--you will be fine.

We also purchased Oyster cards when we arrived at the Heathrow tube station. Super easy to do with the machines--just follow the directions, and there are attendants there to help if needed. What we did, which worked well, was to roughly estimate how many trips on the tube we were planning, and the round up a bit, because at the end of our stay in London, we simply turned in our cards (again, automated and very easy) for a refund. The machine will dispense up to £10, I believe. And if you underestimate, no worries, it is very simple to reload the card with extra cash.

Good news! The Lancaster Gate Underground Station has reopened, after a six month closure to replace the lifts. The reopening was mentioned in a post on a TripAdvisor forum. To check it out, I just visited the Transport for London website, which no longer lists the station as closed. I also ran a test "journey planner" search on the website using the station as a destination, and it showed up just fine. (While it was closed, as I recall, the TFL journey planner wouldn't route you to or from it.) I'm personally interested because I'll be staying nearby later this year.

The problem with changing trains on the underground is that it usually means going up and then down (or sometimes the reverse), a flight of stairs, maybe twice. It can also mean another flight of stairs up to street level. Once you've dropped your luggage at your hotel, it will be fine for getting around the city . . . though sometimes buses mean less walking and, of course, getting to see the city while you ride.

Thank you very much everyone! These were all a huge help. After discussion, we decided to go the Heathrow Express route to make it easy since it will feel like the middle of the night when we get there from Washington State. Getting 30+ days in advance made it pretty cheap too! Thanks again for all the help! Look forward to visiting London for the first time!

Lancaster Gate reopened on 26 June. (I tried to find the old closure thread, but it came up as 404.)

For some trips during you stay a walk to Paddington may be best and don't ignore the bus.

Excellent choice Stephen.

IMHO sometimes it is worth paying more for ease and comfort. Like you, I fly from the West Coast and taking the Express to Paddington is so easy and pleasant following a long flight that I'm willing to pay extra. Glad you booked early and got the discounted price.

Lastly, nice to hear Lancaster Gate Station has reopened. Staying nearby in the Fall and love being able to hop on the tube there!

You should also research and consider getting 2 for 1 vouchers for some of the more costlier sites. The Eye, Churchill War Rooms, etc. https://www.daysoutguide.co.uk/2for1-london

Been discussed here on the forum as well . Use the search engine. See the the spyglass above?

Enjoy your first visit to London! I've visited many times. Never bored. Simply a GREAT to explore!

Have fun!

WOW I could have written this same question. We are going to be in London for 3 nights, before starting our 5th RS tour, for the first time. Our hotel is just down the street from the Lancaster Gate tube station but as people have mentioned making changes on the tube after an overnight flight can be good or bad. I have started looking at car services to the hotel (really looking for the car service on our return trip leaving from Windsor to Heathrow) but may consider doing it when we arrive. Thanks for the explanations on the Oyster card because sometimes I was getting confused but it does seem simple. Will be definitely following this thread for great information.

I see that you have worked out your travel arrangements to the hotel. I would suggest just getting a regular oyster card at Heathrow. It's really easy to do and you will have more flexibility with that than you would the visitor oyster.

With the exception of all of the stairs and escalators the Tube is extremely easy to navigate. If you have a smart phone I suggest downloading the free CityMapper app. I found it came in handy for determining routes (train and bus) and will tell you which route is cheapest and even which section of the train should be least crowded at that time of day. Pull up your route before you descend into the station though. You might not have reception at the platform.

We didn't have any trouble taking the Tube from Heathrow to our hotel in the Victoria/Pimlico area. On advice from this forum, we took the train to Westminster Station and then took a bus that dropped us off about a block from our hotel. That supposedly saved us some stairs and some construction work/issues at Victoria station. Navigating the stairs and escalators with luggage after a long flight was not much fun, but the route navigation itself was easy with the CityMapper app. I was glad we opted not to use a hired car. The reviews for most of them appeared not to be very good. May reviews said they had to wait an hour two for their pickup and the drive to the hotel from the airport took a long time. I'm pretty sure we made it to our hotel earlier than we would have if we had taken a car from the airport to our hotel.

Since the OP has decided to take the Heathrow Express, I'm not sure it makes sense to pick up an Oyster card at Heathrow. The stations for HEX and the tube are separated and may not be close together. I would wait until Paddington or Lancaster Gate. Tube stations should have them available.

https://tfl.gov.uk/fares-and-payments/where-to-top-up-and-buy-tickets