A view from the sky on the London Eye

For the longest time Erin has been asking to go to the London Eye. It was something we were supposed to do in 2020 but for obvious reasons we weren’t able to get to London. Instead we made something that was a must do on a trip to London this summer.

Table of Contents

Booking tickets

Pre-booking tickets to the London Eye is the only way to guarantee entry. Although you can try to buy tickets on the day, you might not be successful and that could lead to disappointment. Not only does booking online guarantee you entry but there are other perks such as saving money when booking 7+ days in advance or combining a ticket with other attractions to save even more money.

There are often 2for1 vouchers floating around for the London Eye on things such as Kellog’s packets. We used one of these when booking online (and it was really easy to do) and it saved us quite a lot of money. It’s definitely worth keeping an eye out or asking around for a voucher before you book.

Entry

When you book your London Eye tickets online you have to choose a time slot. If you don’t read carefully at this point you might miss the bit where it tells you that this is only the time you can enter the queue, not your actual time you can get in a pod.

We booked for 4:30 on a Saturday and the queue was all of the way around the barriers that were set out in front of the London Eye. However, we thought we’d chance it and see if we could join the queue early at around 4:10 and they let us in no problem. Security was really only looking that people had tickets and not so much at the time on them I think. Anyway, this saved us a bit of time which I was thankful for.

Before we could go on a pod we went through airport style security which was really quick and easy. When we got to the front of the queue we were shown where to wait for the pod and then it was time to get on.

The London Eye experience

Your ticket gives you a 30 minute ride on the London Eye in a shared pod. I know numbers in each pod are limited and less than they were before Covid. I’m not entirely sure how many were in our pod on the day but I would guess somewhere around 16. Actually, the pod was really quite full with this amount and not that much space to move around without getting in someone’s way.

The pods move really slowly and you don’t really feel them moving too much. We only really noticed when we stopped at different places around the circle for a couple of seconds and even then it wasn’t very much. We wasn’t sure how Erin would do with the movement and height but she didn’t care at all.

John and I loved looking out over London in our 30 minutes and we spent some time picking out different things that we could see. Erin on the other hand met 2 girls roughly her age and they all just wanted to look at each other’s soft toys. Erin got a corgi from Buckingham Palace Gardens earlier that day and she wanted to show it off.

There are different points in the 30 minutes where there are good photo opportunities and certain places in the pod to stand. There are announcements but they’re not very loud and unless you’re standing in the right spot at the right time, you’re unlikely to get it right. We were lucky and some other people took photos for us and we took photos for them so this is something to consider.

Our verdict…

I was a bit sad that Erin didn’t really care too much about the London Eye in the end, especially considering how much she’d asked to go on it. However, she is adamant that she had a good time so I’ll take that. John and I really enjoyed it too but had we paid full price I think I would have felt that we paid too much. It’s definitely worth holding out for a voucher if you can get one.