Children have been left peering through railings at their favourite bear Paddington sat on a bench unable to join him or pose for photographs after turning up out of school hours to find the park gates locked, with some youngsters reduced to tears.
A statue of the popular bear, dressed in trademark blue duffle coat and red hat and eating a marmalade sandwich, has recently been placed on a bench in St John’s Gardens in Cardiff city centre to promote the third iteration of the franchise, Paddington in Peru.
It has been highlighted on social media, and parents have taken their children to meet their animated hero.
But families have been left disappointed to find the park is only open from 10am to 4pm from Monday to Saturday and not open at all on Sundays.
‘They need to be a bit more flexible’
Labour-run Cardiff council said the measure was to “prevent issues with antisocial behaviour”.
Gareth Evans, from Cardiff, took his two children, Anni, nine, and Dafydd, six, to see Paddington on a Sunday, but was unaware the park would be closed.
He told the BBC: “When we got to the gate, there were lots of parents there with their children, we waited around for a while expecting it to open but it didn’t.”
He claimed some people had come from as far as Tenby in Pembrokeshire, which is some 95 miles away.
“It’s an attraction for families and Sundays are when kids don’t have school so I think they need to make it a bit more flexible,” he said.
‘My daughter was in floods of tears’
Chloe Archer told WalesOnline she took her seven-year-old daughter to see Paddington twice and both times the gates were locked, leaving the child “devastated”.
“She was really upset and she wasn’t the only one, there was another little girl there crying. My daughter was in floods of tears too. It was awful. She was looking at Paddington through the railings, desperate to see him,” she said.
“How are we meant to take them after school if it’s not open?”
One primary school decided to take its pupils to the park during school hours.
Ffion Jones, the deputy head of Caradog Primary School in Aberdare, said: “If this closes at 4pm, our children wouldn’t be able to come down and see it after school, so we’ve been fortunate today to be on a school trip so they can come and see it in the daytime.”
The figure is just one of many placed in cities across the UK and Ireland to mark the release of the highly-anticipated film in cinemas in November and is understood to be probably the only that is gated off.
FOR Cardiff, the business organisation that is working with the film production company, said there had been discussions about moving Paddington somewhere else.
The council confirmed to the BBC it was working with FOR Cardiff to explore the possibility of finding the bear a new home. The council has been contacted for comment.
