Hi there,
My family of 4 is traveling to Paris and London in late March. We are planning 5 full days in each. My wife found something online called Londonpass. Is this a well known thing? It includes admission to multiple places of interest as wells an Oyster card. It can be purchased for a number of days. Is this a good thing to get?
Thanks
Are you two adults and two children? How old are the children? They may not be interested in running from covered sight to covered sight, which you might have to do to make the pass pay off. Time spent walking to the nearest Underground station, riding the Tube and then walking to your next target (London is really large) is time not available for actually visiting places.
Keep in mind that London has a long list of large, top-flight museums that are free/donation requested. The pass will not help with those, and the time you spend at places like the British Museum will be time not available to go to places covered by the pass.
If you're attracted by inclusion of the hop-on/hop-off bus, it may help to know that many folks say it doesn't work well in London because traffic is really bad.
In other words, I am doubtful about this pass, but it depends on the users. There's really no shortcut; you need to make a list of the places you want to go and realistically will have time to go, then compare the prices of the covered sights to the cost of the pass. Check each place for family and children's discounts, because they are often available.
LondonWalks offers dozens of different walking tours, lead by licensed guides. They are excellent, and they cost only £15 for adults, £10 for students and £5 for kids 8 to 15. Kids under 8 are free.
Be ready for a variety of answers on this one. The real answer is “it depends.” The only way to truly determine if this is a money saver for you or not is to plan out your itinerary ( think two major sites per day), add up admissions, and compare the prices. I have used it as a solo traveler before and for my itinerary it paid off. Others have priced their itinerary out and found it did not pay off for them. The only way to know for sure is to run the numbers for your trip.
Some, most of whom have not actually ever price compared for a specific itinerary, will tell you that it is a waste of money. They base this on their feelings and the number of major locations that have free entry.
Some pros for the London Pass are flexibility, quick entry without having to wait in line for tickets, able to budget sightseeing, and the freedom to try some new sights you may not have planned on.
Some cons are it may not actually save you money unless you plan/ pre-price carefully. There can be a temptation to try to put too many locations in your daily schedule to try to get your money’s worth.
do a SEARCH (gray box on top of this page) on London Pass and you'll find several previous discussions of pros and cons.
The Oyster card which the pass gives you only has so much credit on it, which is not equivalent credit to the weekly or daily Pay as You Go caps.
That is not made entirely clear on the website, but it is NOT unlimited travel you are being given.
Thus whether or not the Oyster Card is adequate depends on your itinerary- there is no definitive answer.
If you travel extensively in London you will need to top the Oyster up (very easy to do at any ticket machine)- or revert to other payment methods such as contactless or the electronic payment methods such as Apple.
Ironically to make best use of the Pass and obtain optimal value then you will be travelling extensively!!
The London Pass is very rarely a wise choice and that will be especially true for a family with children.
On the surface it looks like a good deal as it includes a lot of attractions and it’s true that if you spent all your time visiting those on the Pass and spending little time in each you will “save” on the individual tickets. But no one actually wants to spend their time rushing from one site to another with no time to stop and enjoy those you are particularly interested in. And, most importantly, there are so many major attractions that are free* to enter that you can easily spend 5 days filly occupied and spending very little.
The HOHO buses are really not value for money in London. The traffic in central London is such that you can make very slow progress (these buses can’t use the bus lanes that the regular buses can). If you get off to see a site you can wait a long time for another bus to come round and they are often full, especially with a party of 4.
And finally as mentioned above the Oyster card does not provide the free travel for your visit as implied.
Great responses. Thank you. With 5 days, we will likely have our itinerary well planned in advance, so will price things out.
One thing passes can sometimes do is enable squeezing in a "free" quick visit somewhere you are interested in which otherwise you might not stump up the admission price for. Consider this in the planning.
You received lots of good information on this question you started in 2020, to prepare for your trip then:
https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/england/1-week-in-london
(There is some mention of the possibility of that trip having been canceled by Covid lockdowns, so I am doubtful you were able to go.)
What sights would be at the top of your list now for the trip you are planning?
You could make a list, write the admissions prices next to each attraction, add them, and see if the pass would be better than buying tickets on your own. One would need to be realistic as to how many sights you could see per day, moving quickly.
Carol now retired is right. Do a price comparison to see if the pass is right for you.
I'm thinking it's possible a pass would be more useful on a repeat visit since you may already have seen several of the most time-consuming museums. On this trip you might want to do a quick revisits to see just your favorite part of something like the British Museum or the V&A. On the other hand, a bunch of short visits could mean more time spent on traveling back and forth.
Rebecca - the thread you have linked is from March 2020 about a proposed trip in June 2020. That trip could not have happened as the UK was locked down at the time. Of course the OP could have re-arranged since then but I suspect that the most likely outcome is that this trip is replacing an aborted 2020 one.
Yep, had to cancel the 2020 trip. This is our new first trip!
I was not remembering exactly what month the lock-downs began.
I had some friends who got to do their trip to England early that spring, so I guess they were just under the wire, before the lock-downs were imposed.
Jamie, so glad you will get a chance to do your trip! At least you had a "trial run" from last time, planning your trip to London. And the information on that older thread is still good, and may benefit others reading this thread.
It was 26 March when lockdown was finally imposed in the UK so those friends must have been in early spring. That was almost six weeks after my ship was refused entry to Tonga due to Covid fears and exactly a month after I had returned home from Australia via a very tense Abu Dhabi airport.
isn31c, I think they were there for the last 2 weeks in February and the first week in March.
It's interesting to note that Rick and the Rick Steves film crew were able to get into some countries during lockdown in 2020 and film some new episodes. It was a great time to be filming due to no crowds.
Not that it really matters but I think lockdown in the UK was on Monday 23rd March. I remember it vividly as we had got back from 6 weeks in New Zealand 5 days earlier on 18th. We had seriously considered staying on New Zealand to see out what we then thought would be a few weeks of lockdown. Luckily we didn’t or we could have been there for months. We managed to get home by a somewhat roundabout route.
I reread my prior thread - that was a great one. Thanks everyone, I think we will hold on the londonpass. Combing the trip this year - 5 days Paris and 5 in London. No day trips this time from London - just too much to see in the city. Just got my Rick books on both cities delivered today on Labor Day! It’ll be a marathon trip but my 16 and 18 year old are up to the challenge.
Lock down was actually announced in the UK on the evening of 22 March with immediate effect, but did not have legal force until 26 March, so I guess you can take your pick and be pedantic as to which day you define as the start- 22, 23 or 26.
I have never been able to decide whether I was lucky or unlucky to disembark in Sydney (per my schedule), as after Sydney my ship had to do a non stop passage back to London Tilbury, as every scheduled port thereafter refused her entry- so merely made bunkering and provisioning calls- at least one of which, Sri Lanka, was under armed guard. That would have been a unique voyage- not least because everyone on got their entire cruise fare from Sydney to London refunded, plus free drinks and free wifi.
I had made a booking error and actually flew back on the day of arrival in Australia, after a 56 day passage there!!
Mum's care home had actually locked down before even 22 March- so to me there is also a 4th date- 17 March.
