London question - can you help please

mumlady1

Hi there
Are any of you kind people able to help me please? I will be visiting London in May as a big birthday treat for my OH. The cheapest flights I can find for the 5 of us are with Easyjet or Ryanair but they only seem to fly to Stanstead. We hope to be staying somewhere near Leicester Sq so we can go to see a show. Is Stanstead within reasonable travelling distance? Would I be better to pay the extra money, roughly £200 to fly into Heathrow?
I have had a wee look into this online but as I don't really know London, the information doesn't mean very much. Is there anyone out there with good knowledge of the area who would be willing to advise me?
Many thanks:)

Kim_kim

mumlady1 wrote: »

Hi there
Are any of you kind people able to help me please? I will be visiting London in May as a big birthday treat for my OH. The cheapest flights I can find for the 5 of us are with Easyjet or Ryanair but they only seem to fly to Stanstead. We hope to be staying somewhere near Leicester Sq so we can go to see a show. Is Stanstead within reasonable travelling distance? Would I be better to pay the extra money, roughly £200 to fly into Heathrow?
I have had a wee look into this online but as I don't really know London, the information doesn't mean very much. Is there anyone out there with good knowledge of the area who would be willing to advise me?
Many thanks:)

Heathrow is on the edge of London - it's still a good journey into London.
If your getting the train (or tube) in anyway it can only take about an hour longer (at most, but I never use public transport) from stanstead - personally I'd save the £200 & use stanstead.
Just be careful in case of very early morning or late night flights, in case stanstead doesn't have trains to connect to those.

Kim_kim

Ah hold on, is it only £200 extra for all of you rather than each of you?
If it's all of you, that's only £40 extra each. I'd probably use Heathrow then.

ThemeOne

There would be a marginal benefit to arriving at Heathrow, since you could then take the Piccadilly Line straight to Leicester Square. However, although direct the tube is slow as there are a lot of stops.

Stansted is quite distant from London (35 miles or thereabouts) so it's a more expensive journey into the city. The train will drop you at Liverpool Street where you'd have to get a tube into the West End.

There might be coaches from Stansted which serve the West End, but I don't know about them.

Personally I'd probably stick with Stansted, but hopefully you have a bit more information now to decide.

mumlady1

Hi Kim Kim
Thank you so much for the super quick reply. Yes, the £200 is in total so roughly an extra £50 each. Your info is really helpful so I'll maybe have a wee rethink on our original plans.
Thanks again

susancs

You can get the Stansted Express which takes 50 mins (same Journey time from Heathrow to central London) and runs every 15 mins into Liverpool Street and although more expensive than other travel from Stansted it would be cheaper than the £200 extra airfare and tube fare into Heathrow (especially if you buy a discounted family and friends railcard to save a third on fares) and quicker than the tube line from Heathrow, you also have the option of Easy buses or National Express coaches that are cheaper.

If you are a family of 2 adults and 3 children, the most expensive part may be trying to get a family room for five in central London as a lot of hotels have a maximum of 2 adults and 2 children, so sometimes families have to get 2 rooms or an apartment.

Kim_kim

susancs wrote: »

You can get the Stansted Express which takes 50 mins (same Journey time from Heathrow to central London) and runs every 15 mins into Liverpool Street and although more expensive than other travel from Stansted it would be cheaper than the £200 extra airfare and tube fare into Heathrow (especially if you buy a discounted family and friends railcard to save a third on fares) and quicker than the tube line from Heathrow, you also have the option of Easy buses or National Express coaches that are cheaper.

If you are a family of 2 adults and 3 children, the most expensive part may be trying to get a family room for five in central London as a lot of hotels have a maximum of 2 adults and 2 children, so sometimes families have to get 2 rooms or an apartment.

But (& I'm no expert here as I rarely every use public transport), presumably if they are visiting London they will be getting oyster or travel cards. Couldn't they get them at Heathrow for the duration of their holiday & the Heathrow to hotel journey would be effectively free?
Also if they use stanstead they will have to get a tube or bus anyway from Liverpool to Leicester Square & so need to buy travel cards anyway.

I don't know the fare from stanstead to London return & it needs to be less than £40 each for them to even contemplate. But they will be using a tube that day anyway, if not from Heathrow then from Liverpool Street.

Moto2

susancs wrote: »

If you are a family of 2 adults and 3 children, the most expensive part may be trying to get a family room for five in central London as a lot of hotels have a maximum of 2 adults and 2 children, so sometimes families have to get 2 rooms or an apartment.

There are a few places, the only one I recall though is the Dover Hotel
http://www.dover-hotel.co.uk/rates/

martinnathalie9

Are there no flights going to Gatwick? Th Gatwick express train gets you to London Victoria extremely fast. Roughly half an hour.

googler

mumlady1 wrote: »

Hi there
Are any of you kind people able to help me please? I will be visiting London in May as a big birthday treat for my OH. The cheapest flights I can find for the 5 of us are with Easyjet or Ryanair but they only seem to fly to Stanstead.

Where are you travelling from?

Also, just because you're going to Leicester Square for the show doesn't mean you HAVE to stay there. There's tube, taxi, buses running late which will ferry you to any hotel further out (which will likely be a cheaper hotel)

mumlady1

Hi everyone, thank you so much for the replies, all very helpful and much appreciated :-) We have, for financial reasons booked flights to Stanstead as I managed to get a bargain! Yay!
Just one more question, if you guys don't mind answering please. Any suggestions on areas to stay? Although we're a family of 5, my babies are 18, 19 & 20! Lol. I can sort out hotel/airbnb or whatever but not sure of the actual district to look at. On a normal holiday we would be happy to walk/travel wherever but we need to be reasonably central for the Queens Theatre & maybe central London for some shopping as hubby has just had a major ankle operation & won't be quite back up to full speed yet.
Thanks again for your help everyone, it is so so helpful :-)