Best option, travel card or oyster card for 10 day trip to london

For the adults, seven day Travelcards will definitely be cheaper than the maximum daily Oyster price cap for seven days. Outside the period of the seven day Travelcard, use Oyster pay-as-you-go.

The situation regarding fares for children under sixteen as tourists is complicated and I don't really understand it as I live in London. Hopefully someone who visits regularly will help out.

Unless things have changed, you have left it too late to jump everyone through the hoops for the children's Zip Oystercard and this is questionable for a single visit anyway, even a fairly long one. So you can get discounted regular cards for those under 16, but those who are 16 will have to pay adult fares.

I can't help you re the kids' fares. But I can recommend the one-week travelcard, unlimited tube and bus in zones 1-2, which covers about everywhere you're likely to want to go. Then add more money to it for the last few days.

I think I paid about 32 GBP for a one-week card, and used it a lot. I had an extra day and took one tube ride, paying full fare, which was close to 5 GBP. So you can see the potential saving by using Oyster.

You need paper travel cards for the 2 for 1 discounts, purchased at a National Rail (train) ticket office, not the Underground.

I would get 7 day tickets and use the 2 for 1 offers for the adults and 16 year olds if they have aged out of youth fares, then for the other 3 days, Oyster pay as you go. That will cap at £6.40 each day for adults in zones 1-2. If you're taking the tube to your lodgings, and arriving at Heathrow, get the Oysters there and put about £20 on each card and you can top up as needed.

I'm not sure what the adult age for tube travel is (16, 17, or 18), but for the 14 and 11 year olds, you can get the young visitors discount applied to an Oyster card for up to 14 days and they will pay child fares. The discount is applied by the Underground station attendant.

Don't forget that you need passport "style" photos for 7 day travelcards.

You won't be able to get the Travelcards at the airport, so buy Oyster cards there for the Tube ride into London. Don't put too much money on them---maybe £15---you can always add more later. And you can get the deposit refunded so you don't lose anything by having both Oyster and separate Travelcards.

Go to a National Rail station the day after arrival and purchase your paper Travelcards ( and remember those passport-size photos). If you start them on Day 2 of your trip, they will be good through Day 8. Do all your 2-4-1 sites on those days. Then use your Oysters for the last two days.

Thank you everyone for the great information. Does anyone know if I can just add days to the 7 day travel cards? Unfortunately the way our trip is working we will need the 2-4-1 at the front and end of our 10 days. I believe the travel card has to be valid for the day you purchase the 2-4-1. Correct?

You can only take advantage of the 2-4-1 offers on days the Travelcard is valid. And you cannot add days to the 7-day card. But you can buy separate 1-day Travelcards for the extra days.

Tripadvisor has a good article on using the Travelcards:

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Travel-g186338-c195600/London:United-Kingdom:2.4.1.Travelcards.Step.By.Step.html

There is also detailed information on the Days Out website.

You cannot add days to a travelcard, but you can purchase one day Travel cards, but they are £12 each for adults.

One flaw that I don't really understand the reason for is that you can't load a 7-day Travelcard onto a visitor Oyster card, but you can do that on a regular card. (The discounts aren't really all that valuable--see below.) Why does that matter? Well, an Oyster card with a Travelcard loaded onto it is very flexible. You can buy the Travelcard only for Zones 1-2 and use Oyster card funds for journeys outside those zones. Also, if your journey is longer than a week, you can simply use pay-as-you-go for the days outside the Travelcard and you'll still get the daily cap. This is particularly useful on the first and last days, leaving or returning to Heathrow--you would otherwise have to get a Zones 1-6 Travelcard for everyone (horrendous), or pay cash fare for the trips to and from Heathrow (equally horrendous). (And BTW, you have to be a Brit to get a senior discount.) Here's a link to the clear-as-mud TFL webpage that attempts, failing miserably, to explain all this:

https://visitorshop.tfl.gov.uk/help/ticket-comparison/

It would be feasible to get everybody a regular Oyster card and also a 7-day paper Travelcard. But that's two things for the kids to keep track of, rather than one. There is one advantage to the Visitor Oyster card if you have kids--you can stop where a Tube station has a manned ticket office (most don't) and get their cards validated for half price trips (ages 11-15). That may be better than the Travelcards. It depends on whether the total cost of all the trips your kids take (at the 50% discount) will exceed the cost of their Travelcards for those seven days. Travelcards have a fixed cost. It would be hard to hit the daily cap on a kid's Oyster card.

Of course, it may be too late to get a Visitor card anyway. You can't buy them in London.

IMHO the Tower of London, the London Eye, the Wax Museum, Buckingham Palace, etc. are all overrated and ridiculously expensive tourist traps. The only "biggie" I would ever consider bothering to see is Westminster Abbey, and that's usually got a mile-long queue of tourists snaking out the entrance and down the road. Really, none of that stuff is worth doing, even at half price. Also, you'll burn up a LOT of your London time seeing those things, which is a shame. There are so many fantastic absolutely free experiences available. For the money and time you spend waiting in line to see the Crown Jewels (whee) or to ride on the glorified Ferris wheel (double whee), you could have a fantastic dinner or see a play or concert. Of course, given that you're bringing teenagers, all that may be out of your hands anyway :)

Visitor Oyster cards cost £3, have to be mailed to you, at a cost, and could potentially be lost in the mail.
Standard Oyster card have a refundable £5 deposit.

Why bother going to London if you aren't going to see the things that make it London?

I guess that's kind of my point. Times Square isn't New York City. The Death Star isn't the whole Empire. There's always a lot more to discover when you get away from the big touristy stuff. FWIW, I don't think that the Tower of London. the Wax Museum, or the London Eye are what make London London. They make it a theme park that has as its goal vacuuming the wallets of tourists--and it's not even a particularly good theme park. My favorite experiences have ALWAYS been in undiscovered places and secluded corners, not just in London but everywhere else. I spent my best day ever in London having a horribly unhealthy full English breakfast (yes, including blood pudding), playing bridge with the locals (and practicing the British ACOL system), then going to a pub and having several enthusiastic people try to explain cricket to me, then seeing a strange little museum at night (Dennis Sever's), putting together a nighttime picnic dinner at Tesco, then walking the Thames embankment. By contrast, the worst day I ever spent was standing in line with eight billion other tourists, beating my head on the door of Westminster Abbey, begging for the privilege of dropping 35 bucks to go see the tombs of a bunch of dead kings. (Hint: dead kings are not all that interesting, and not worth $35 to see.) Then I got talked into the London Eye, which while moderately fun, wasn't worth the three+ hours it took to get there, stand in line, and actually ride the fool thing. I think I tend to agree with Rick S about this sort of thing. What's truly interesting about a country is its people, who you will NOT see or interact with by going where all the other tourists taking selfies are.

Certainly no London inhabitant would be seen dead at Madame Tussauds.

(Some people of my generation still hold a grudge against them for closing down the London Planetarium so they could put a braindead celebrity show in the space.)