Lines closed at Build-A-Bear stores for ‘Pay Your Age Day'

PHILADELPHIA (WTXF) - Build-A-Bear workshops around the country were forced to close off lines for their 'Pay Your Age Day.'

'Pay Your Age Day' was held July 12 and allowed customers to pay their current age for any furry friend available in the store.

Build-A-Bear had said to take advantage of this deal, customers needed to be a "Bonus Club" member. Registration for this is free and can be completed online or in-store.

Build-A-Bear released a statement Thursday afternoon announcing they had to close lines and stop taking additional customers.

"Per local authorities, we cannot accept additional Guests at our U.S. Build-A-Bear Workshop locations due to crowd and safety concerns. We have closed lines in our U.S. stores. We understand some of our Guests are disappointed and we will reach out directly as soon as possible," the company said in a statement.

Build-A-Bear released the following statement Thursday afternoon:

In response, we distributed vouchers to Guests, who were present in lines, to be redeemed for a future purchase. We are now making vouchers available to our Build-A-Bear Bonus Club members in the U.S. and Canada who log into their account by midnight on July 15, 2018. Vouchers related to this event will be honored through August 31, 2018.

It is our sincere desire for all of our Guests to enjoy the best Build-A-Bear experience possible. As such, our goal with the voucher extension is to enable us to better flow traffic to the stores over the next several weeks to avoid long lines and wait times as much as possible. Therefore, we strongly encourage Guests to consider delaying their trip to Build-A-Bear, and we appreciate everyone's understanding and patience in this matter.

Build-A-Bear Workshop takes seriously the privilege of providing our valued Guests with an opportunity to make a furry friend. It is with that spirit that we created our Pay Your Age Day event and the new, year-long Count Your Candles birthday program, where kids 14 and under can "pay their age" for our new Birthday Treat Bear during their birthday month.

Thank you for your passion and continued support."

For more information visit the Build-A-Bear website.