London Pass useful?

You have three days only in London. Do you think you'll spend that time visiting Lord's Cricket Grounds? The Chelsea Football Club stadium? The Ben Franklin House? Or the Foundling Museum? Fifty five attractions are great, but if they are not the attractions you want to see, it's basically a waste. We've found that the London Pass doesn't pay for itself. Check the website of attractions and confirm just what you'll get. (For example, The Imperial War Museum and many of the art galleries are already free entry. You only get an audio guide with the pass for National Gallery or the Tate.) The British Museum is free, as is the British Library. A three-day pass is 71GBP. The Churchill War Rooms, Hampton Court, Shakespeare's Globe, St. Paul's, the Tower of London and Westminster Abbey total about 81GBP. So it CAN work for you if you stay on schedule and see all you planned. If you have too much planned to afford a half day out to Hampton Court, then suddenly you're losing money. It all really depends on what you plan to see. FWIW, I find Rick Steves' recommendations about when to see each site saves me much more time than any skip-the-ticket-line offer.

For a list of the attractions covered by the pass, go here to this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_pass or here:
http://www.londonpass.com/

Holly, the first time my husband and I went to London we did the hop-on-hop-off bus to get an overview. We really didn't use it as the main transport to get to particular attractions. BTW, I misspoke earlier, the site for 10% off the London Pass is visitbritain.com. The current cost in US Dollars is $105.50 for the 3-day adult pass. But again, use Rick's guidebook to help you figure out what you can realistically fit into your 3 days (still allowing time for sleeping and eating) and not make yourselves too hurried to enjoy your time there. Save something for your next visit:-)

Holly, the best way to figure out if it's cost effective for you, is to go down the list of attractions you know you will want to see (and have time for), figure out what their normal admission prices are, then add them up to see how close you come to the price of the pass. (Rick's guidebooks give you a good idea about how much time to allow for an attraction.) We have always found that we came out ahead or broke even with the pass, but being able to skip the ticket lines is definitely worth a couple of pounds if it's close. Also, don't forget the pass gives you discounts at some restaurants. By the way, if you buy the pass through visitlondon.com you always save 10%. Finally, we get the London Pass only, without the additional travelcard option, because we use Oyster cards on the tube. Have a great trip.

Thanks so much Mary. I think we will go with Pass then. Do you think we still need the open top sightseeing bus tour or we could just load up our oyster card, get the London pass and travel to the attractions by tube.

In my experience with such cards, particularly time-sensitive ones, they don't usually end up being a good deal. They may offer lots of attractions, but as a previous poster stated, most aren't the ones you really want to see, and most of the major ones are free anyway. You really need to consider how much time you want to spend at any one place. In Chicago they have a similar card. On the face of it, it seems like a good deal, but when you factor in how much time you might want to spend at the aquarium, or the Willis Tower, or the Field Museum, you realize that you can't possibly do enough of the things on the list in your limited time to make it worth the price.

We got the London Pass on a trip a few years ago. Wasn't worth the cost. That's my advice, especially for a 3-day trip.

I don't think a London Pass is worth it, particularly if you are only going to be in town for three days. Instead I would get a National Rail pass and use the 2for 1 vouchers. http://www.daysoutguide.co.uk/ You can get National rail tickets at train stations in London. (It's a paper ticket), Do not get it a a tube station--it won't be valid. It needs to be a rail ticket.