London Pass with travel

The London Pass is rarely deemed to be good value, but you need to work out what you want to see and whether it makes sense for you.

Many London museums are free entry and 2-4-1 tickets are often better value.

In addition to the above, if there are 2 or more of you the paper travel cards offered by British Rail are a great deal for tube and bus travel. The paper travel card/pass is how you access the two-for-one deals- check out this website [https://www.daysoutguide.co.uk/2for1-london][1]. These must be purchased at a British Rail station (not a tube station). The cards are for 7 days- you could use an Oyster card to pay for the other days, or purchase daily tickets on those days. You also need to bring a passport sized (not passport quality) photo for the free ID card they require and make for you. You can print this out at home on your computer or use a photo booth located in the station.

If you are alone, you could get an Oyster card and load a travel card/pass and some pay-as-you-go money on it to get the best fares automatically. The Oyster deposit is refundable if you turn it in at the end of your trip. You can also get back any unused pay-as-you-go cash loaded on it.

One major drawback to the London Pass (with or without travel) is that not only are some of the attractions already free, you have a daily limit on how many attractions you can use it on. And to make it work as a 'deal' you have to do a lot in one day- basically rushing from one site to another.

Forget about the London Pass.
A great many of the museums in London are free. There will be a few things you will want to do that you will pay for, but I cannot see that totaling £212.

There are also some great things to do in London that are not covered by the London Pass. You don't want to be confined only to their list.

Make a list of the things you wish to do in London that are on the "list" of the London Pass. Next to each one, write the cost for entry. Add your list. Does the total of pounds for entry fees equal or exceed £212? If not, you do not need the London Pass.

You wrote:"I am looking at the London pass with travel for 10 days this summer."

Will you be in London for the entire 10 days of your trip? If you plan on going to other places in England during your stay, that will reduce the number of days you are actually in London to use the Pass.

We spent almost a month in England in May 2016, a week and a half of that in London. We each bought an Oyster card when we got into London. Just use cash or credit card, and get them from a machine inside a tube station, or at Heathrow or Gatwick airports. The Oyster covers travel on tube and bus. If you want to make it simple, just pick up an Oyster card when you get there. When you purchase it from the machine, you can choose the amount you want on it. Put £20 to £30 on it. There will be a £5 deposit on the card itself. You can get a refund for the amount that remains on your card at the end of your visit, including the deposit. One such refund station is at Heathrow Airport.

Do not buy the Visitor Oyster card that is sometimes associated with the London Pass. You have a deposit on the card itself, and you do not get that refunded when you cash it in at the end of your visit.

The London Pass is usually considered to be a bad deal, but some do like it and make it pay off. As stated above, you have to crunch the numbers and see if you will definitely be going to enough covered sights to make it worthwhile.

However, the "with travel" add on is definitely a bad value. It's expensive because it covers all six zones. Except for Heathrow airport (and how many tube trips are you making there?), everything on a typical tourist's itinerary is in zones 1 and 2. Thus, a two zone Travelcard is a MUCH better deal.

Hi, Wendy,

We just got back from two weeks in England. Four days of that we were in London, using London Passes. We were a family of 4 with two kids, which may be the reason we liked our 3-day London Passes. We used it for the following attractions: Hop-on Hop-off bus, Tower of London, Tower Bridge, river boat on the Thames, Arsenal Stadium tour, HMS Belfast, Royal Observatory Greenwich, and Shakespeare Globe. It definitely saved us money. We got Oyster cards, too, and used them as much at the end of our trip - when we passed through London once more on our way to Heathrow - as we did at the beginning. That's what is so nice about them: they are separate from the London Pass and don't expire unless you run out of funds on them.

We also went to free museums and attractions not on the London Pass. For our family, it was worthwhile. I might suggest that you get a shorter time frame Pass and focus on those attractions for those days, then do the free museums on your other days in London.

One thing to mention: we originally had 3 adults who were scheduled to travel, and in the end, one couldn't go. I was not able to get that London Pass refunded. So I would make certain of your travel plans in the 30 days after you buy the Pass, which is your window for a refund.

Best,
Mindy