2 for 1 days out question

[Dolallytats]

Hubby wants to take our 4 year old to London Zoo tomorrow. National rail are doing 2 for 1 if you show your rail tickets when buying Zoo tickets. Being 4 my son is free to travel BUT if we buy him a return ticket it is still about £12 cheaper than buying a child's Zoo ticket. Are we allowed to do this??

Yes. I just go to the local rail station, buy the cheapest rail ticket and then get the bus to the zoo.

Is it just the two of them going?

Could you make it even cheaper and but him a ticket from the station closest to the zoo?

Yes, it's just the two of them (would love to go but am agoraphobic). You have to show them a return ticket for your journey so I don't think they will accept a ticket bought from the nearest station.
Thanks for your replies-the saving will give DS a bit more spending money in the Zoo shop!!

They seem to accept any rail ticket!

I buy a ticket from my local station to the next stop. I don't even get on the train. Mind you, I am in London.

Will have a look for T&Cs

Useful info about tickets- seems they must be for London. It doesn't mention child tickets though- I would have thought that one adult ticket would be enough to claim the offer, but i'd probably buy a child one too, just to be sure.

Do you have a family railcard? Sometimes you can recoup the cost of one in one journey. It is always cheaper for us to use it and buy 3yoDD a ticket than to buy two full-priced adult tickets and let her travel free.

Oh, and you're not missing much- London zoo makes me want to stick pins in my eyes

Oh no, you DO need to get him a ticket- here

Thanks everyone!! The info desk just e-mailed me to say that I can do that. We don't have a rail card because we don't get trains very often (hubby feels guilty doing the day trips without me, but I'd rather our son had a lovely day out)
Maybe forking out for a railcard would push me out the door-I'm too much of a tightarse to waste it!!

We wanted to go to London Zoo with our 4yr old recently on the 2 for 1 offer, so had exactly the same issue. I emailed the [email protected] and they told us to buy a ticket from as close to London as possible (even though we live further out). But our home train station wouldn't let us buy a ticket which started closer to London. So we actually had to do the train journey into London, then go to the ticket office in Euston and ask retrospectively for a ticket from the station one stop up the line into Euston! They knew all about the 2 for 1 thing so were happy to sell us a ticket.

And then when we got to London Zoo, they just wanted us to wave a few train tickets at them to get the discount - they didn't even look at them at all and there was no need to have bought DD a train ticket at all!