Hi, Could somebody please help me suggest which sites should i buy tickets to attractions in london or is it better if i buy in london itself ? We will be in london for 5 days ( not consecutive ). We are a family of three (2 adults and 1 child). This is our first time visiting london. We leave in 3 weeks (3rd week june).

Thanks,

The only tickets I buy before going to London is the London Eye. I do this because it requires reservations, and I like to choose the time right at dusk, so I can see the day and evening lights of London.

Happy travels,

Jules

Also, if there is a specific theatre show that you want to see, on a specific date/time, consider advanced purchase.

Dave
kidstolondon.com

Most London attractions will be busy during the peak holiday season. The London Pass is worth a look and it allows you access to many of the attractions london has to offer. http://www.londonpass.com/

If you want to see Parliament, I believe you need to order tickets ahead of time.

<<The London Pass is worth a look and it allows you access to many of the attractions london has to offer>>

It allows you access to SOME of the many attractions that London has to offer.

MANY of the attractions tourists go to see are FREE & most of the other ones aren't on the London Pass.

The London Pass gives you access to all of London's transport system - except that most tourists rarely go outside zone 2 and can get cheaper passes

The London Pass isn't much of a deal for the vast majority of visitors. Since so many of the biggies (V&A, British Museum, Imperial War Museum, National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery and so on) are free you really have to cram several of the for-pay sites into s very short time to make it pay. Plus - the transport option to the LP is more expensive than just getting travel passes/tix in London.

I would <u>never</u> pre book tickets onn the Eye from home. What if the day/time of your advance purchased tix lands on the stormiest day of your trip. Wait until you're in London and buy for the day - or at most a day or 2 ahead.

As for theatre - unless you want to see one of the normally sold out block busters, there is no reason to buy theatre tix ahead of time. Just go to TKTS in Leicester Square the day of performance and get 1/2 price tickets to most shows in London.

You might want to buy tix to the Tower of London ahead of time - but just in any tube station. Not from home before your trip.

If you want to be PEDANTIC about it it offers entry to over 50 London attractions from just &pound;12 a day

If you want to see Madame Tussaud's buy tickets on line as you avoid very long queues.

Carolena

Yes - yorkyman. That is how they lure folks in. &quot;Over 50 attraction at only &pound;12 per day&quot;. The marketing overwhelms w/ quantity. The problem is - while 50 attractions are covered, the majority are not anything a first (or 6th) time traveler would probably get to. And because one must use the Pass on consecutive days, it is VERY hard to get money's worth out of it.

The Pass does cover some great sites - but a 2 day pass is &pound;42 - so you'd have to go to about 5 major sites in 2 days to just break even. And w/ so many free sites in London it usually just doesn't pencil out -- UNLESS you can get a 2 for 1 discount.

It doesn't matter if 50 sites ARE included - no one can get to 50 sites in the short time covered by the passes.

Ah yes i c what you mean.

Still I must say that 29.00 GBP for a full days travel and entry to as many things as you can see doesn't really sound like bad value to me. The printed guide is a nice touch too.

These cards are not to lure you in but to let a tourist do there thing avoid the cues and pay a decent price.

I personally did Seville on a 3 day card and i must say just the walking through the long cues there were to get into everywhere saved me hours. Time while you are touring is very important. On a holiday the last thing you want to do is to cue, even the if you are British!

Not trying to pull wool over anyone's eyes and not making any commission or being any part of the organisations that produce these things.

I would say most of these official cards are a good deal to a traveler in my honest opinion as a well seasoned traveler.

Yorkyman: One major difference between London and places like Paris, Seville, Rome etc is there are sooooo very many free sites in London. Plus the only place w/ long queues in London is really the Tower. Most everywhere else (except sometimes Westminster Abbey) you just walk right in. So the LP doesn't even help much for queue jumping.

Just because a pass is marketed well doesn't automatically make it a great deal. Like I said - If you can get one of the periodic 2 for 1 specials, the LP can make sense.

&lt;&lt;Still I must say that 29.00 GBP for a full days travel and entry to as many things as you can see doesn't really sound like bad value to me&gt;&gt;

Considering that on a normal day in London I'd be hard pressed to spend more than 10GBP on transport and spend NOTHING for the free museums / galleries, I'd have 19GBP to buy lunch &amp; dinner or get a half price ticket for a show

It's horses for courses, but, to my mind, a paid-for attraction that you can see and leave in time to see more than one or two other attractions in any given day isn't that much of an attraction. I'd seriously have to question whether it's worth even a third of &pound;(29 minus a day's Travelcard).

With the geratest of respect and perhaps I am misunderstanding but it seems that some attractions may end up being more enthralling than others so being able to leave one and go to another doesn't seem like the greatest measure of value IMO.

But 50 attractions or 100 attractions I always advise people to look at WHICH ones are offered and if 49 out of the 50 don't sound that interesting then forget it, regardless of the price.

I also think a lot of people buy these things with the notion they are going to be cramming a lot in and then they realize, too late, they'll never see it all and don't really want to in one trip.

Ah well .. I give up .. this is just going to turn into a slanging match. The origional question was ... &lt;&lt;Could somebody please help me suggest which sites should i buy tickets to attractions in london or is it better if i buy in london itself ?&gt;&gt;

I feel the London Card does answer that pretty much fully.

Hi Bhureka- With respect to your out of London time;I've just ordered a Great Britain Heritage Pass for 15 days. I did a lot of pass vs no pass comparisons before I made this decision and it seems like good value, so it may be an option to consider(of course it depends on what sights you actually end up visiting). Whilst I recognise it's not of much value in London the point of this response, is that my pass happens to cover our last day in London, and it gives half price to the Tower of London. However,I don't know if I can buy half price tickets at a tube station or must I buy these at the Tower itself (perhaps more inconvenient than the savings warrant)?
If Jules happens to be reading this, have you ever riden the Eye in late June? We'll be there the same time as bhureka and sunset is at about 9.30, so I assume the last trip would be over before the sun actually sets.

You don't say how old your child is bhureka, but if you search under topics like &quot;family trip London&quot; (for myself I did quite a few searchs with 'teens' in the title)you may get some useful info on a feasible pace &amp; possible sights that will appeal to your child. Whilst I'm not suggesting your whole selection process should hinge around your child- life tends to be not much fun if none of it does. From far away it's not easy to appreciate all the subtleties of queues,transportation, concentration, interest or lack thereof that go into making a great/lousy days sightseeing. Just ticking off the 'biggies' isn't any sort of guarantee,so the advice you've (mostly) been given here to not overly commit yourself in advance has potentially a dual edged benefit of saving you money and also allowing some flexibility in itinarary. The amount of free places to visit in London is quite staggering- and frequently they have been mentioned in trip reports as highlights, even for children!

JoMark: One did use the GBHP to get 1/2 price at the Tower ticket kiosks.

<u><b>HOWEVER</b></u> As of this year the GBHP no longer covers the Tower (or at Windsor, Kensington Palace, or the Royal Mews)

It still is a terriffic value for other parts of the UK - but pretty useless in London - other than for St Paul's, Greenwich, and Hampton Court Palace.

thanks Janis, so I'll buy my ticket at a tube station and I don't need to agonise over whether the queue is worth it for the half price saving. I am fairly sure that the website when I checked it a couple of months ago was still claiming the Tower at 50% reduction, but lots of organisations are tardy to make what they consider to be small changes on their web site.

Haven't looked at the actual GBHP site lately - but a couple of their &quot;re-sellers&quot; like railEurope, etc still have the old info.

One of the few that got it changed right away was Rick Steves (and that is hard for me to say since I'm not among the Steves' army)