London With Kids by Age Group
A “family friendly London” list that treats a two-year-old and a twelve-year-old the same way wastes half its recommendations on the wrong age.
For toddlers and younger kids, the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Playground in Kensington Gardens is close to ideal: a free, fully accessible, Peter Pan-themed enclosed space with a giant wooden pirate ship and sensory trails, safe for a child to explore while a pram sits nearby. Pair it with the free Diana Memorial Fountain splash feature in Hyde Park, or the gentler Regent’s Canal Waterbus between Little Venice and Camden Lock, a roughly 45-minute narrowboat ride that entertains without demanding a long attention span. Check current hours at royalparks.org.uk .
Older kids get more out of the Natural History Museum’s specific draws, the blue whale skeleton “Hope” in the Hintze Hall and the Dinosaurs gallery, both free general admission at nhm.ac.uk , and out of the Science Museum’s Wonderlab, a separately ticketed hands-on gallery inside the museum’s free, mandatory-timed-ticket general admission. ZSL London Zoo, adult tickets from £31.80 online, works well across a wider age range, since the animal encounters scale from simple to genuinely detailed depending on how much a child wants to read the signage. Check current ZSL Zoo pricing on GetYourGuide before you go.
For a mixed-age group, the Madame Tussauds, SEA LIFE London Aquarium and London Dungeon combo ticket, £59 off-peak to £69 peak, gives each family member something aimed roughly at their own level under one admission. Search current combo pricing on Viator before buying, since the price shifts by season.
Two names worth striking from any older list regardless of the age group you’re planning for: KidZania London closed permanently in January 2024, and The London Bridge Experience closed in autumn 2025, the site now operating under a different name and concept entirely. Both used to be pitched as all-ages indoor fillers, and neither is bookable at any age in 2026, whatever an outdated search result still claims.
Greenwich Park works across every age bracket at once and costs nothing: a free deer park, playgrounds scattered through the grounds, and a climb up to the Royal Observatory that’s steep enough to tire out even the kids who claim they never get tired.
Verdict: match the destination to the child, not the other way around, and treat the combo ticket as the fallback for a group spanning several ages at once. For the free museums and paid monuments the whole family can do together, see the sightseeing guide .