The Paddington Bear Experience — Attraction in London

My honest review. I went on 20.02.25 and was on the Blue Train at around 4.45pm. I booked my tickets via the official site and used my blue light discount. I paid £75 and found out my colleague booked tickets too via Buy A Gift which were much cheaper. She paid just over £50 for 1 adult and 1 child! The original site should always be the cheapest in my opinion, but after calling customer service to see if there was something they could do, they told me no, I should have shopped around. HELPFUL!!! As i arrived I was unsure if the entrance was the exit as everyone was coming out like it was the exit. It was indeed the entrance too, but it is poorly signposted when you get inside and I turned left which took me to the Sealife gift shop exit. You need to enter Paddington through the gift shop, which again just looks like a gift shop so you wouldn't necessarily know this & i wasted around 10 minutes trying to find the entrance & was asking people where to go, I was being told i needed to exit the building and re-enter to the entrance and to go back towards Sealife which baffled me as there's no Paddington signage there, little did I know that these people who I asked were Sealife visitors exiting at the main entrance as they all come out the same main Paddington entrance and exit. So I followed these instructions and ended up asking staff at Sealife to help me and they took me through the staff restricted area to bring me back to where i started, The Paddington Gift Shop! They told me that I had to go through it to get to the ticket booth but because the shop was packed with people you would never know this. The set up of the experience is done very well, that cannot be faulted, it is all very well executed, but the issue lies with the amount of people per experience, now bare with me here as this is where the main complaint starts..... Each section of the experience has activities for the children to complete. Each section has 1 person managing the group. They failed in their duty to manage this so all the children can take part as they should be asking the adults to stand back so the kids can take part freely. Instead you've got adults getting in the way and kids of all ages all wanting to do the tasks and bigger kids having no consideration of smaller kids needing to take part too as some kids aren't as bolshy/pushy as others. Some parents amaze me at how oblivious they are to their little darlings self indulged behaviour, and how they fail to show consideration for others. Manners, sharing and kindness cost nothing. However I do appreciate that if they had spent the same amount or more than I did they too will be wanting to get what they have paid for and this is where the problem lies, as when you pay so much money you want your child to be able to enjoy it and get the most from the experience so this is why they should have less children per slot so they can all do the activities and get the full benefit of the experience. 4 children would be more than enough per slot. The rooms were crowded and unmanaged. Then you get to the end...."The Street Party".... Well this was such an anticlimax. Parents were all sitting around whilst the kids run around feral playing the street games and again not sharing the aperatus, holding onto the parts not allowing others a turn to play the games etc and there were no staff on the floor assisting with it so others could get a turn and when one appeared she seemed almost desperate to get away from the kids at the bean bag throwing section and vanished from the floor leaving me to assist with it. This was a 90 min experience for 1 adult and 1 child for £75 WITH DISCOUNT! I DO NOT recommend this for the price. £30 max is what I would pay for an adult and child to this. With the cost of the experience being so expensive, what would have made this somewhat better, would be to give each booking a book at the end or even a jar of marmalade since they take part in the making of it. This experience is best suited...

First of all...my son really liked it. He's just turned 9 and the experience seems generally more for younger kids but he's autistic and still very 'young' for his age. The sets, especially the room with the paintings and the Peruvian jungle were awesome, the actors were very good, especially the conductor and the staff were helpful and friendly. However; I would have preferred that the children had to find the oranges lying about the jungle (say 20 oranges?) to put in the machine, as they seemed very disappointed not to find the map after all. Not every family was photographed before getting on the train - we weren't asked. A shame for the kids not to see more of Paddington, only hear him and at the end, Paddington meet and greet is the size adult (for practical reasons, obviously), rather than the little bear they know from the films. Getting in was chaotic, they didn't check my carers evidence at all and the slow-moving queue (which we were originally turned away from and told to come back in 5mins) meant we missed our 1.15 slot and had to wait for the next available train time of 1.37 which worried my autistic son as he's fixated on numbers. At the end of the experience, you're shown out into a street and there's a smattering of fake snow falling down but then it stopped and that was disappointing. No one there to meet you, no proper goodbye, so we figured out we were meant to buy things from vendors and round the corner were some (unmanned) games kids could pay and some picnic benches with colouring sheets on. People had left their half eaten food and rubbish on the tables and no one was clearing things away. We had no idea there was a meet and greet/photo op with Paddington until the last minute. The dressing of the set for Christmas was great, as we're the visuals, like the band playing and people on the platforms dancing as you go on the 'train' to Windsor Gardens. My son really enjoyed his task of mending Mrs Bird's fridge. Another lovely touch was the train set and lighting in the gift shop/waiting area. It was festive fun and I would recommend, especially as I paid a reduced rate as part of a home ed group, but it isn't as slick a production as other immersion experiences like Lapland UK. Oh - and remember you can't use mobile phones during the actual experience itself. Just at the beginning and end. I'm sure some people ignore the rules, but...

First, the good: this place was done with creativity and heart. The rooms were done well, the scenes were vibrant (except for the actual festival at the end, which was somewhat dimly lit in a basement for some reason). My 7-yr-old, who is a big fan of Paddington, enjoyed it. She had several moments she talks about, particularly when Paddington was wandering around the "street" at the end and got himself tangled up in a phone booth. She also liked the games, including chutes and ladders.

Now the downside. The whole experience was very obviously rushed. The actors talked way too fast, faster than adults would and the kids clearly didn't follow along. There was clearly just a few minutes in each scene and although they didn't use words like "hurry" it was definitely the name of the game. There was background music throughout, and it was often louder than the actors, so it was also difficult to understand them for that reason.

Because of all this rush, the experience lacked the magic it could have had. Our tour had another family with a chatty kid, and he could have had some priceless interactions with the cast if they hadn't been so rushed (there were some moments when they had some interactions.)

The one exception to this was the jungle setting with the explorer cast members. They did a fantastic job of not making it feel as rushed (though clearly there was still a schedule). One teenage sibling of a younger child on our tour, at a part where the kids were supposed to be looking for a missing jungle map, handed a cast member a tube map. They riffed on this for a bit (a Peru tube? I'd like the jaguar line) but in a way that didn't disrupt the experience for the kids. The teen, who was rather too old for the rest of the experience, was all smiles at that and so was I.

So I guess I would say this experience was good. With a more relaxed timetable, it could be great. Considering the amount of money they charge for a rushed experience, three stars may be too high. Give more time in each room and it could easily be a...