London transport for teens - no Oyster

[Wh0KnowsWhereTheTimeG0es]

I have two young teens (in the 11-15 age group) and we travel to London a couple of times a year. We have generally used travelcards but often we only need to make one journey on tube/bus so DH and I have taken to using contactless cards plus day return train ticket as it works out cheaper. I wondered about getting the junior Oyster zip cards for the DCs now as we have a couple of trips coming up but they have a £15 admin fee each which seems steep. Is there any other way around this? If we had contactless cards for them too presumably they'd end up paying adult fares.

Go Henry cards are contactless and you can set the spend rate. They're a good way of giving pocket money as well.

Ah, I have Go Henry on my things to do list too. Even if they do get charged at the adult rate it's probably cheaper than either travelcards or £15 each, thanks.

Just get normal oyster, you don't need the junior version. Buy a couple of oysters and find a staff member who can apply the visitor discount.

Go Henry will cost more in the long run

You can get a Young Visitor discount zip card that lasts for up to 14 days - info here tfl.gov.uk/fares-and-payments/travel-for-under-18s/travelling-with-children?intcmp=25255#on-this-page-1

You really don't need a zip, just get someone to authorise a visitor discount on a regular oyster. It really is that simple.

Yes they can get visitor discount applied but not in a national rail station needs to TFL or a shop that does oyster top up

I don't think anyone mentioned a national rail station. I made a safe assumption that the OP would go to an underground to buy and top up oysters.

Op gets a day return train ticket. I made a safe assumption national rail would be involved.

But chippy tonight?!

My fault for mentioning the zip word - it's just a young visitor oyster card

Look at getting a day return with a day travel card included- that's what I do. It's by far the cheapest option.

We do use travelcards normally, but quite often we only do one or two short tube/bus journeys and are paying about £10 each for the travelcard portion of the tickets. Also sometimes we stay overnight (will be doing this soon) and you can only buy one-day travelcards. So far it is looking as though the cheapest way for this particular occasion is a period return to the destination station in London as opposed to our normal arrival station, works when you know exactly where you are going. I might apply for a couple of Oyster cards anyway though.