Oyster Card

If you are staying for less than five days or so, yes. Longer and it works out cheaper to get weekly Travelcard passes (which will also be sold on an Oyster card).

Yes, YES, YES!
You cannot pay with cash on buses, they only accept Oyster cards (or some other debit cards which have compatible contactless technology).
For the tube, you can buy individual tickets, but Oyster card fares are about 2/3 of the cost of individual tickets.
And, with an Oyster card, when you reach the cost of a one-day pass, it automatically "caps" the fare so everything after that is free. You no longer have to guess at the start of the day whether it is worth getting a one-day card for that day.

Click here for the rules and fares.

I found the OysterCard to be almost the next best thing since sliced bread as my grandmother use to say.
I purchased it right at Heathrow before I used the Tube to take me to Victoria Station. Just load it up and off you go. The suggested
amount is 20 pounds. I was there 3 days and easily hopped on and off buses and the tube without a care.

The other wonderful thing about the OysterCard is that you have it forever. I like the thought that mine is in my moneybelt loaded
with enough to get me into London city for a return some day. You can also give it to someone else to use up the balance on your OysterCard. It's convenient and efficient.

Definitely worth it if only for the ease of use. If you don't want to keep it for your next trip to London, you can get a refund on any money you don't use at Heathrow when you leave. Have a wonderful time.

Oyster Card is a great invention. Saves you money if you ride often, also "liberates" you to take short bus or tube trips if your feet are tired. I still have mine from a 2008 London trip, hope it works when I return -- but I can't remember how much value is left on it! :-)

Just curious - anybody know the origin of the term? Seems an odd name for a transit card. Was London famous for oysters at some point in the past?

Here is what the branding people said, in their own words:

OYSTER was conceived, mainly, because of the metaphorical implications of security and value in the hard bivalve shell and the concealed pearl. Its associations with London through Thames estuary oyster beds and the major relevance of the popular idiom ‘the world is your oyster’ were also significant factors in its selection.

The phonetic uniqueness of the word OYSTER and its solid metaphorical meaning also played a large part in its selection and made it a highly memorable name. Its relative sophistication made it desirable both for London residents and the many tourists and visitors. A contextual factor was the existence of the Hong Kong Octopus, relevant in a different way to travel but using a similar creative metaphor.

The metaphor itself allowed for a series of clever graphical interpretations: most notably where the concentric rings of the bivalve shells are turned into the target for the contact point of card with the electronic reader; the same curve as a single line mirrors that of the Thames’s curvaceous route; the blue of the Thames is the OYSTER card’s dominant design colour and the OYSTER’s versatile circularity is also cleverly used in the Oyster.tfl.gov.uk website as a go button, an underground symbol reference and the lens of a magnifying glass.

You get used to that very quickly when you deal with branding people.

hee hee!!!

I liked that I could get a refund on our cards at Heathrow using a machine, if the balance was under 10 pounds. Many people were in a fairly long line that I thought might be required for a refund, so I tried the short machine queue. Refund paid for a pre-flight breakfast, which seemed quite reasonably priced for airport food.

Bill in SoCal

Another YES for the Oyster cards. We have a small balance on ours from last year in London so when we return (and I know we will) we will be ready to go. Have fun!

We've been using the same Oyster cards since 2005. I always write down what the pay as you go balance is on each card when exiting at Heathrow for our flight home. And of course I make sure there's enough for that first trip into the city when we return:-)

If you open an account at www.tfl.gov.uk/oyster and register your Oyster Card number there, you can then look up the balance online at any time.
Unfortunately you can only top it up online if you have a UK address.

Yes to the Oyster no matter why it was named that. I've kept the Oyster card that was issued with a picture of Will and Kate on it. Used it for a long while on return trips till it went a bit wonky. Simply bought another Oyster card which is stashed in my travel wallet awaiting its usage this Fall. All about ease of travel!! Didn't know I could check online to see how much is on the card. Brilliant! Checking now!

I have found the Oyster to be the best thing ever for getting around London and even back and forth to the airports.

Don't keep your Oyster in the same place with your chip credit cards, especially if the chip allows you to wave the card to pay. The two types of chips conflict and in some cases will zero out the Oyster.

I really enjoy the freedom it gives with not having to remember what underground zone you are traveling to if you buy individual tickets or passes (if you buy a pass for only the central London zones and end up crossing into an outer zone, you have major difficulties exiting the tube station! and if you buy a pass for all zones you waste a lot of money if you only travel within the central zones). And the fact that you will never be charged more in one day than you would be if you were using an equivalent day pass is brilliant. Also, now if you stay a week, you will never pay more i total than you would have for a weekly pass.

I bought an Oyster that was designed for tourists from a US travel agent before leaving on my trip. That is, the value on the card never expires. When I bought it, a regular Oyster would expire after about 18 months of non-use. Not sure if that still applies. But you can always cash in your Oyster when leaving London if you don't know when you will return.