Originally Posted by
vanpoodle
I will be in London for 9 days in the fall and I have been looking into this myself. Days 1 and 9 will be half days transiting to and from LHR and I will use my Oyster card on those days. But it appears that it will be much cheaper for us to get the zone 1&2 7 day travelcard for the middle days. It appears that good deals can be had on the Visit Britain web site to order it a month or so before we depart and have it shipped to us.
We will likely use the Heathrow Connect to get to and from LHR.
It sounds like we would then have the old-fashioned paper cards. It also appears that doing it this way will be a bit cheaper than loading the travelcard onto our Oysters.
Travelcards issued on paper tickets are exactly the same price as Travelcards issued on Oyster cards - though exchange rate fluctuations may occasionally make the price on visitbritainshop.com different.
If you already have Oyster cards, then bring them with you, and load up a zones 1 & 2 travelcard once you get to London. It's possible to do this in advance, so when you get to Paddington, you could do this alongside adding a small amount of prepay credit to cover your first and last day's (non-Heathrow) travel.