Children crying as they are excluded from the park where Paddington Bear sits on a bench in Cardiff

The children stared through the bars at their favorite bear Paddington sat on a bench unable to join him or pose for photographs after arriving outside of school hours and finding the park gates closed, with some young people reduced to tears.

a statue of popular bearDressed in a blue duffle coat and red hat and eating a jam sandwich, he has recently been placed on a bench in St John’s Gardens in Cardiff city center to promote the third version 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 were disappointed to discover that the park is only open from 10am to 4pm Monday to Saturday and is not open at all on Sundays.

“They need to be a little more flexible”

Labour-led Cardiff City Council said the move was aimed at “preventing issues of anti-social behaviour”.

Gareth Evans, from Cardiff, took his two children, Anni, nine, and Dafydd, six, to see Paddington on a Sunday, but he didn’t know the park would be closed.

He told the BBC: “When we got to the door there were a lot of parents there with their children, we waited for a while hoping it would open but it didn’t.”

He claimed some people had come from as far away as Tenby in Pembrokeshire, which is about 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 little more flexible,” he said.

‘My daughter was crying her eyes out’

Chloé Arquero he told WalesOnline She took her seven-year-old daughter to see Paddington twice and both times the doors were closed, leaving the girl “devastated”.

“She was very upset and she wasn’t the only one, there was another girl crying. My daughter was also crying her eyes out. It was horrible. “I was looking at Paddington through the bars, desperate to see him,” she said.

“How are we going to take them after school if it’s not open?”

An elementary school decided to take its students to the park during school hours.

Ffion Jones, deputy headteacher at Caradog Primary School in Aberdare, said: “If this closes at 4pm our children wouldn’t be able to come and see it after school, so we’ve been lucky enough to be on a school trip today.” . so they can come see it during the day.”

The figure is just one of many placed in cities across the UK and Ireland to mark the release of the long-awaited film in cinemas in November and is understood to be probably the only one that is closed.

FOR Cardiff, the business organization working with the film production company, said there had been discussions about moving Paddington to another location.

The council confirmed to the BBC that it was working with FOR Cardiff to explore the possibility of finding the bear a new home. The council has been contacted for comment.