Pls help with London tube card, family with teens

[Anonymous]

I have looked at three blog posts and am more confused than when I started. We are a family with two kids between ages 12-16 who will be in London for 8 days. The info about kid discounts is very confusing. Do we want an Oyster card? A week travel card? An Oyster card plus week travel card? A visitor's Oyster card? Maybe visitor's Oysters for the adults and week travel card's for the kids? I did not think about this in advance, so we don't have time to order online before leaving, and will have to buy at Heathrow.

Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have looked at three blog posts and am more confused than when I started. We are a family with two kids between ages 12-16 who will be in London for 8 days. The info about kid discounts is very confusing. Do we want an Oyster card? A week travel card? An Oyster card plus week travel card? A visitor's Oyster card? Maybe visitor's Oysters for the adults and week travel card's for the kids? I did not think about this in advance, so we don't have time to order online before leaving, and will have to buy at Heathrow.

Thanks.

This is the best site I have seen.

https://www.londontoolkit.com/briefing/london_transport_child_fares.htm

It depends on how much train/bus riding you will do. For the 12 year old kid you will want to buy an oyster card at a machine, and then find an Underground agent (they are normally out of their booths to help people at big stations like Heathrow and Paddington), and ask them to apply a "Young Visitor Discount" on the card for your 12 year old. They will take the card to a ticket machine and take about 30 seconds to basically log into the machine as an employee an recode the card to add the discount. The 12 year old uses that card now has half fares on all trips. Almost certainly the best discount for kids visitors.

The 16 year old is considered an adult (unless you go through a registration process to go to a London post office, mail a form with a photo, wait 2 weeks for the card to come back...). Basically you need to figure out if you will be riding the Tube/buses enough over the week to be worth it to buy an Oyster card and add a week pass. It also depends on where you are traveling. If all your trips are in Zones 1-2, and you will be taking say 4 rides/day or more, a week pass is a good deal. It will be 47 pounds including the cost of the Oyster card, and daily capping is normally 8 pounds in zone 1-2, so that would be 56 pounds. But it gets more complicated if you are traveling outside of central London. In our case we had a couple of days where we only took a few Tube rides, and one day where we went to Harry Potter studio pretty much as our days activity (other than walking around near our hotel after dinner), and in that case it was way outside of zone 1-2, so the pass wouldn't have helped. Here's info on the weekly pass (Travelcard).

https://www.londontoolkit.com/briefing/travelcard.htm

If you are gonna be riding trains in zones 1-2 quite a bit for 6 or more days, I think buying the 16 year old and the adults an Oyster card and adding a 7 day travelcard to all of them will probably be the best deal. If you may not ride as much for a few days, or are doing a day trip out of central London (zones 1-2 cover a radius of say 5 miles from Charing Cross), I would just use contactless cards for the 16 year old and the adults, especially if you have 3 cards which don't have foreign transaction fees. You could also use the same card with no fee if one person uses the physical card, and the other person uses that card loaded onto a phone for Apple/Google Wallet. That way you save the 7 pounds nonrefundable cost of the Oyster card, plus don't have to faff about on departure of getting a refund on whatever funds you have left over on the Oyster cards (which you will get in coins).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have looked at three blog posts and am more confused than when I started. We are a family with two kids between ages 12-16 who will be in London for 8 days. The info about kid discounts is very confusing. Do we want an Oyster card? A week travel card? An Oyster card plus week travel card? A visitor's Oyster card? Maybe visitor's Oysters for the adults and week travel card's for the kids? I did not think about this in advance, so we don't have time to order online before leaving, and will have to buy at Heathrow.

Thanks.

This is the best site I have seen.

https://www.londontoolkit.com/briefing/london_transport_child_fares.htm

It depends on how much train/bus riding you will do. For the 12 year old kid you will want to buy an oyster card at a machine, and then find an Underground agent (they are normally out of their booths to help people at big stations like Heathrow and Paddington), and ask them to apply a "Young Visitor Discount" on the card for your 12 year old. They will take the card to a ticket machine and take about 30 seconds to basically log into the machine as an employee an recode the card to add the discount. The 12 year old uses that card now has half fares on all trips. Almost certainly the best discount for kids visitors.

The 16 year old is considered an adult (unless you go through a registration process to go to a London post office, mail a form with a photo, wait 2 weeks for the card to come back...). Basically you need to figure out if you will be riding the Tube/buses enough over the week to be worth it to buy an Oyster card and add a week pass. It also depends on where you are traveling. If all your trips are in Zones 1-2, and you will be taking say 4 rides/day or more, a week pass is a good deal. It will be 47 pounds including the cost of the Oyster card, and daily capping is normally 8 pounds in zone 1-2, so that would be 56 pounds. But it gets more complicated if you are traveling outside of central London. In our case we had a couple of days where we only took a few Tube rides, and one day where we went to Harry Potter studio pretty much as our days activity (other than walking around near our hotel after dinner), and in that case it was way outside of zone 1-2, so the pass wouldn't have helped. Here's info on the weekly pass (Travelcard).

https://www.londontoolkit.com/briefing/travelcard.htm

If you are gonna be riding trains in zones 1-2 quite a bit for 6 or more days, I think buying the 16 year old and the adults an Oyster card and adding a 7 day travelcard to all of them will probably be the best deal. If you may not ride as much for a few days, or are doing a day trip out of central London (zones 1-2 cover a radius of say 5 miles from Charing Cross), I would just use contactless cards for the 16 year old and the adults, especially if you have 3 cards which don't have foreign transaction fees. You could also use the same card with no fee if one person uses the physical card, and the other person uses that card loaded onto a phone for Apple/Google Wallet. That way you save the 7 pounds nonrefundable cost of the Oyster card, plus don't have to faff about on departure of getting a refund on whatever funds you have left over on the Oyster cards (which you will get in coins).

Oh and its always better to buy the Oyster card in London upon arrival. The visitor Oyster card that they mail you is a scam.

[Anonymous]

You can just use a credit card / Apple Pay when you enter, like in NYC. Each of you uses a different card. I just did this in London a couple of weeks ago.

[Anonymous]

I think if you use your phone it calculated for you the cheapest option?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You can just use a credit card / Apple Pay when you enter, like in NYC. Each of you uses a different card. I just did this in London a couple of weeks ago.

Yes this is usually the simplest/easiest way for the adults and the 16 year old. The system calculates daily and weekly caps so even if you ride a lot the final prices are very reasonable and not much more expensive than if you get the weekly travelcard.

For the 12 year old it's a significant savings to get an Oyster card and have an agent add the Young Visitor Discount to it. All fares are then half off.

[Anonymous]

To tag along to this, if I’m taking the tube with my 8yo, she doesn’t have to pay, from what I’m seeing. But how do I go through the fare gates with her? Squeeze together?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To tag along to this, if I’m taking the tube with my 8yo, she doesn’t have to pay, from what I’m seeing. But how do I go through the fare gates with her? Squeeze together?

Yup, kids 10 and under are free. Have her walk in front of you and stay right behind her. You won't have any issues.

[Anonymous]

As everyone else said - just use a card that you tap in and out with. There is a daily max fare (it is very complicated, depends on the zones you travel across so I can't give you a number) which if you hit you will travel free the rest of the day. Young children are indeed free and usually the TFL folks will open up a luggage gate for them to walk through. Definitely don't try and get in with them in a turnstile.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To tag along to this, if I’m taking the tube with my 8yo, she doesn’t have to pay, from what I’m seeing. But how do I go through the fare gates with her? Squeeze together?

Yup, kids 10 and under are free. Have her walk in front of you and stay right behind her. You won't have any issues.

Yes. You use the gates that are larger for folks with luggage, bikes, wheelchairs

[Anonymous]

Family of 4 and recently visited London. Both kids got oyster cards + young visor discount. It's very easy and we topped them off as needed. I must say London public transit is awesome.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To tag along to this, if I’m taking the tube with my 8yo, she doesn’t have to pay, from what I’m seeing. But how do I go through the fare gates with her? Squeeze together?

Yup, kids 10 and under are free. Have her walk in front of you and stay right behind her. You won't have any issues.

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

For what it is worth, buses are cheaper than the underground and cover more ground. Transport for London has a fantastic trip planner that maps out the routes for you and you can select buses only. It's fun seeing the city from the top of a double decker. If you're traveling between two destinations within zone one, you may find it quicker to take the bus than walk to the station, wait for the metro, transfer (if needed) and walk to your final destination.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For what it is worth, buses are cheaper than the underground and cover more ground. Transport for London has a fantastic trip planner that maps out the routes for you and you can select buses only. It's fun seeing the city from the top of a double decker. If you're traveling between two destinations within zone one, you may find it quicker to take the bus than walk to the station, wait for the metro, transfer (if needed) and walk to your final destination.

True, and being up on the upper deck is fun. But I wouldn't go too far on a bus in central London, the traffic is bad and they move slowly. Use the CityMapper app and it will give you the best route, updated with live bus arrival times.