Best London pass for families with kids

Quick answer

Go City All-Inclusive Plus is usually the best family pass — it covers the three big icons kids want (London Eye, Shard, Madame Tussauds) plus 100+ other attractions, with heavily discounted child prices (~£44–£79).

Family pricing snapshot

• 1-day All-Inclusive: £79 adult / £44 child
• 3-day All-Inclusive: £139 adult / £69 child
• 3-day All-Inclusive Plus: £189 adult / £124 child
• Explorer Pass (4 attractions): £79 adult — flexible across 60 days

What actually works, by age

The pass math only tells half the story — the other half is whether your kids will actually enjoy what it covers. This is where most families get it wrong: they buy a history-heavy pass for a five-year-old, or an entertainment-heavy one for a fourteen-year-old who'd rather be at the Tower.

• Toddlers (0–4): Stick to places with room to move and nothing breakable — Kew Gardens (buggy-friendly, space to run) and the Natural History Museum (the dinosaur skeleton in the main hall does most of the work, and it's free anyway). Skip anything that involves a guided history talk or a lot of standing still and reading — the Tower's Yeoman Warder tours and Westminster Abbey's audio guide will lose this age group in about four minutes.
• Primary school (5–10): This is where a pass earns its keep. Tower of London lands well at this age — ravens, Beefeaters, and the Crown Jewels are exciting rather than dull, and the dungeon-adjacent stories are scary-fun, not actually scary. Madame Tussauds and the London Eye both work here too; the Eye especially, if you turn it into a "spot the landmark" game on the way round.
• Tweens and teens (11–15): Old enough for real history and real queues. The Tower's Crown Jewels and torture exhibits land properly at this age, and The Shard's viewing platform tends to go down well simply because it's tall and photogenic. This is also the age where a walking tour (see our tipping guide for what to pay a guide) starts to work — younger kids won't last the distance.

Top family-friendly attractions

• Tower of London — Crown Jewels and Yeoman Warder tours
• Natural History Museum — free, dinosaurs, easy day
• Kew Gardens — discounted child entry
• Royal Museums Greenwich — Cutty Sark + Observatory

A realistic 3-day family plan

This is the mix-free-and-paid-days approach in practice, not just in theory:

• Day 1 — free day. Natural History Museum in the morning (get there for opening, the queue builds fast after 10am), lunch nearby, then Kensington Gardens and the Diana Memorial Playground in the afternoon. Total attraction spend: £0.
• Day 2 — pass day one. Tower of London first thing — arriving at opening genuinely saves an hour of queueing by midday. In the afternoon, walk across Tower Bridge and take a river boat back towards central London; kids generally rate the boat higher than the second museum of the day would have scored.
• Day 3 — pass day two. Madame Tussauds in the morning, London Eye in the late afternoon. The Eye's queues and light are both better a couple of hours before sunset than they are at 11am.

That's two paid attractions per pass day — which matches the "don't over-buy" rule below almost exactly.

The stuff nobody tells you

• Buggies and cobbles don't mix. The Tower of London's courtyards are cobbled and genuinely hard work with a pushchair. Kew Gardens and Greenwich Park are the buggy-friendly counterpoint if that's a factor for you.
• Fast-track queues are worth more than the ticket price suggests. Madame Tussauds and the London Eye are the two worst queues in London for walk-up visitors — 60–90 minutes isn't unusual in summer or school holidays. Every major pass includes priority entry to both, and with two tired kids in tow, skipping that queue is worth more than the pound-for-pound ticket saving.
• Most historic sites don't allow outside food. The Tower and Westminster Abbey both restrict food inside, and their cafés are priced accordingly. Pack a picnic for the park days (Kew, Greenwich) and budget properly for the indoor-site days instead.
• Baby-change queues exist too. At peak times in school holidays, expect a wait at the busiest attractions' facilities — worth factoring into the "two attractions a day" math rather than three.

Family-specific tips

• Mix free and paid days. Pair a free museum day (Natural History, Science Museum) with a paid pass day to halve your average daily spend.
• Don't over-buy. Two paid attractions a day is realistic with kids — three is a stretch. Choose the pass duration accordingly.
• Check age cutoffs. "Child" usually means 5–15. Under-5s often go free; 16+ pays adult on most attractions.

When a family pass isn't worth it

A pass isn't automatically the right call just because you have kids. It tends to lose to individual tickets when:

• You're only doing one or two attractions total across the whole trip. Run the numbers in the comparison tool before assuming a multi-day pass wins — for a short list, it often doesn't.
• Your kids are all under 5. Since under-5s are free at most sights already, a family pass is really only buying value for the adults' tickets — worth checking whether standalone adult tickets plus the free museums beat it.
• Your trip is longer than about 5 days. Kids rarely sustain "one paid attraction every single day" for a week — a long pass frequently goes partly unused, which is the most common way families overspend on this.

Get your family's answer in 30 seconds

Add your adults and kids to the comparison tool — it auto-applies child pricing and free-entry rules to give you a real per-family total.