London pass better in crowded july than standing in lines?
 

My dilemma... I am going to London in what I understand to be the very crowded month of July. Is it better to buy the London pass to avoid what I'm sure will be long lines even though I'm only interested in the following sites-
Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's Cathedral, "Royal Portrait" Museum(can't remember name!), Hampton Court, Tower of London, London Dungeon (maybe), Madame Tussauds (maybe), Kensington Palace, London Eye. I will be paying more overall for the Pass, but is is worth it for the convenience?
One more question. I will be there for 5 days, what order should i do things? I would also like to see Notting Hill,Soho, do the Thames cruise and shopping on Oxford and bond street and a pub crawl!) Thanks so much for any input!

Most of the places you named are not on the London Pass, including the National Portrait Gallery (free), London Dungeon, Madame Tussaud's, Westminster Abbey, and the Eye. You can get advance tickets to the Tower at some tube stations.

I'd probably skip the pass based on what you want to see. Check their website to see what's included, as Anonymous is correct that a lot of your places are not included.

Some other thoughts that might help. You can buy a combined ticket for Tower of London and Hampton Court Palace (and I think Kensington Palace as well), which could save some line time (and a few pounds).

Also, I'd skip Madame Tussauds unless you are really interested in wax figures. It's like 25USD a person - a total tourist trap. Also, I didn't go but heard that London Dungeon is only worthwhile if you have kids - it's definitely not a must see for London if you only have 5 days.

As for planning, your list is kind of all over London, so I'd base a plan on the weather in addition to area. The Tower is all the way in the east of London, maybe do that then tube back to the center for shopping in the afternoon one day.

London Eye is across the river but not very far from Westminster Abbey/Parliament, so that could be a good combination.

Go to Hampton Court Palace when it first opens, and see how much time you have in the afternoon when you get back into London - you could do a museum or go to Notting Hill to walk around etc. The park around/adjacent to Kensington Palace is very nice for walking also. If you go there on a Sunday and get off at Bayswater tube, you can visit the outdoor artists' market on the way to the Palace.

Plan for museums on rainy days and the London Eye, Hampton Court, and Tower for nicer days.

Have fun,
Karen

Thank for the advise! Just nixed the dungeon and Madame T. Can I buy the combo tickets at a tube station as well? What is best to see taking the Thames cruise?

Tana,

I'm not sure about the combined ticket for Tower/HCP at the tube station, unfortunately. I was there in January and we had no lines anywhere.

Hopefully someone else can answer that part...

Karen

We enojoyed taking the Catamaran Cruiser from Westminster area to Greenwich -- it also stops at the Tower of London. Our "skipper" happened to have the most hilarious tour patter! Take the hop-on-hop-off tour rather than the circle tour, where everything is repeated in six languages.

Tana- I think you can buy a combo ticket for the Tower and Hampton Court. Here is a good website for the Historic Royal Palaces. I think you can acutally purchase the tickets online and have them shipped home. Its a fun site, pretty informative.

http://www.hrp.org.uk/webcode/home.asp

As for how to plan your days, I made a list of all the places we wanted to visit and do while in London. Next to each place we put the closest Tube stop to each one, and then grouped the activities accordingly. While we didn't use it as a hard and fast schedule, we needed a reference tool like that, as we were 3 women traveling together, all with different things we just HAD so see! It worked well- a good guidebook was critical, too! I hope this helps!!

Yes, thank you everyone for the info and that great web site!