There are SO many ways to save when you travel. We have just returned from our trip to Paris and London, and we were able to cover the cost of our flights and hotels, PLUS have $1000 in spending cash for our trip (check out the AMAZING details HERE)! As incredible as that is, it leaves with one huge gap in expenses; what we are going to DO when we get to our travel destination. With all of our international travel, we have been able to lean on one amazing company to help us immensely with our sight seeing. The Leisure Pass company has passes for several locations so far, all over the world, from New Orleans to Paris to Dublin to London and more. They are an incredible way to go to a country and be able to experience hundreds of attractions without having to pay crazy fees. Their passes include entrance into most of the top things to do, PLUS suggested itineraries, line hopping passes, and even travel in some locations! Their tourist guide books make planning trips easy, and you can either have them shipped worldwide, or pick them up when you get there. We LOVE these passes for booking our travel, and highly recommend them.
What’s Included
There are several countries that have passes available, but for the purposes of this post I am going to talk about our most recent trip to London. We decided to pick up our London Pass in London, as the pickup point was in the center of the city, right next to our hotel. We received lanyards to carry our passes and a pocket size book that told us everything that was included in the pass, all of the Fast Track “line hopper” attractions, and all of the free attractions that we would be able to get in to, plus discounts on some food and souvenir shops. There was also a London Tube Map (OMG we took public transportation everywhere, and there were always multiple line changes to get to a destination, so you NEED this), as well as a London Tourist Map, and a Hop On Hop Off Bus Tour map (THE BEST THING TO DO ANYWHERE, more on this later). You could even opt for their Instant Mobile Ticket and just present it from your phone, but I really wanted the travel books so that we could have all of the information with us everywhere that we went.
How To Use The London Pass To The Max
The first thing that I would recommend is to check out all of the attractions, decide which you are interested in, and then plan out your days based on which are geographically close, and which are the most important to hit. We really had to trim our list way down since this was the baby’s first trip, and we didn’t want to push him too much and have a miserable baby for the trip. With everything that we were interested in visiting, the pass cost less than half of the entrance fees, so this was a huge savings to us on just the entrance alone. In addition, we didn’t have to wait in any ticket lines, since we already had our ticket, and the most popular sites actually had their own London Pass line, letting us bypass any waiting; a HUGE plus, especially with the baby, and trying to squeeze as much in as possible in our short visit.
The first thing that I would recommend that you do is the Hop On Hop Off Bus Tour. This was an incredible way to learn all about the city. We sat on the top of the double decker bus with an audio guide, and we were able to take half of our pictures from the bus. When there was something that we were interested in, we got off the bus, and were able to take pictures, stop and have lunch, or even go in if it was one of the attractions from our list. This Bus Tour pass is good for the entire day, and buses run every 5-15 minutes, so it meant that we were able to cover the entire city with transportation and a tour guide, completely included. That day alone was a perfect way to cement our plans for the remainder of our trip. They also have a Hop On Hop Off Cruise Boat Tour that runs through the Thames River with the same concept and can help you get from one end of the city to the other with unimpeded views of several of their landmarks, with an audio tour. I would recommend all boat tours around sunset to get the best views, and we sat on the bottom of the boat (instead of the open air top section), and there was almost no one in our whole section every time that we did these.
After your tours, you can plan out your day activities. We had already decided what we were going to do before our flight of course, but once you have actually seen the city, you can add in and take out things that you have learned about during the trip, or already have had a chance to experience. The biggest thing that we noticed is that even with a week in London, we didn’t have enough time to cover everything. The London Pass has options for 1 day up to 6 days, allowing you to get to all of the destinations on your list in whatever amount of time, but the Fast Track line hopper (included in the pass) was SUCH a great deal to be able to slash our time waiting for an attraction. This works just like the $100 pass that you purchase in a theme park, where there is a super short line (there was never anyone ahead of us, across all of the attractions that we went to), and you don’t have to wait behind the hour long line of people waiting to get in; a life saver with a baby. No matter how long you are going to visit somewhere, it is not enough time to truly take everything in; the last thing that I wanted to do is to wait to purchase tickets (your pass IS your ticket) or to go in to a location.
How Do I Know If This Is Right For Me?
Once you have decided on where you are traveling to, check and see if there is a pass available in that city. Then decide on what you would like to see; I actually started with the included attractions list, and then checked if there was anything that was not included to add to my list. In London, everything was included, in Paris, everything but the Eiffel Tower admission was included. Then start adding up admission fees. The fees in London were insane; about £30 PER PERSON to get into an attraction; that money goes REALLY quickly! Even with our super trimmed down list, it was almost three times as much in admission fees, so the pass made sense for our trip. There are also travel options that are very easy as well. You can add on the Travel Pass, which has a fully loaded Oyster Card with unlimited public transportation for the 3 days (including the tube, trains, buses, and boats), making transportation around town super simple. The other thing to consider is time, and the convenience of a planned itinerary (a suggested time table of how to get to the most popular destinations based on how many days you have to sight see). The Fast Track pass can save a couple of hours of ticket purchase and entrance lines, depending on when you are visiting, so that means that you will be able to get to more attractions and spend less time just.waiting.in.lines. I also loved the fact that we were able to add in whatever destinations we wanted from our bus tour and last minute change our trip plans without having to factor that into our budget; the pass covers tons of locations, and we didn’t have to pay more for a sudden decision to go into some museum or landmark. If you are looking for something to make life super easy while traveling, this is definitely it.
Overall I absolutely loved our pass; it saved us time and money, and let us experience London in the few days that we were in town. We got some incredible photos and memories, and were able to just focus on our experience, which I highly attribute to having a London Pass. If you are traveling to any of the destinations which have a pass available, I would recommend getting one so that you can get oh-so-much bang for your buck, and make your travel so much easier. They even have sales pretty frequently, allowing you to save money on saving money! Click below to check out the deals running right now, and get more information on what you can do with your London Pass!
Get The London Pass HERE
