Which annual passes are worth it?

[AnneEtAramis]

We are in London.
We have a car but only DH drives.
Often it would just be one of us plus 3 DC on a trip as we work opposite hours a lot to cover childcare.

We recently bought a Historic Royal Palaces annual pass at Hampton Court and I can pop to one site at lunch from time to time and trip to the Tower of London will recoup.

I was just looking at Warwick Castle and a premium Merlin pass is £129 and can be used for Shrek Dreamworks and Madame Tussaud's both of which are on the cards very soon, but in the small print I saw that you cannot use them on most school holidays or bank holidays so I am wondering whether to bother.

Are there any other family type discount cards that are worth it?

I was thinking of NT or EH but not sure how often we would use them.

We have NT passes and we get our monies worth out of them. Our DDs are 7 and 4.

We also have annual passes to London / Whipsnade zoo and the kids love them. :)

There are a choice of Merlin passes. The standard does have restrictions, but the premium lets us in anytime in the hols. Just thought I'd let you know. They are a little dearer but I just got one for me n my son. My DP can use one of our £10 vouchers if he wants to come but he works in the holidays so it wasn't worth us getting him one.

We use them loads, regulars at legoland & chessington. Shrieks adventure was brilliant fun!

We had Merlin for a year and used it several times for Chessington and Legoland plus the Aquarium and London Eye when we were in London. Easy just to pop in but I think there are some restrictions during the Summer holidays unless you get the Premium passes (at least that was what we had 2 years ago).

We also have the NT membership, there is lots in driving distance from SE London, not sure about the rest of the London belt.

We took out EH for this year as we want to go to Dover and some other points but I think we won't renew it unless we go to an area with more properties during next year's holiday.

National trust is well worth it.

Blue peter badges get kids in free with a paying adult at some of the places you mention.

Tesco vouchers also can be used at most the places you mention and I think you can get Marlin passes with them too.