Build-A-Bear

Today is my granddaughters birthday and we went to Build a Bear in Walnut Creek. It is gone! However, they never bothered to mention this on their website. What a sleazy operation. I wound up with a long drive and disappointed child.

Fun place for kids to make their own special friend. Hurry and go though because they are closing their doors at the end of the month. So sad that this store will no longer be close to our house.

In a nice little shopping plaza. Came here a couple of minutes ago with my hunnie and my daughter, cause we had a coupon from McDonald’s for $ 10 off on $ 30 spent. What a fun experience it was. My daughter had fun and I found out my hunnie has good taste in picking out clothes LOL. Loved their bear stuffing station… my hunnie and I wanted to stuff the the bear but was saddened we were unable to do so. Was gonna cry cause I didn’t know if I could’ve sew’d up the bear hahaha. Super cute ‘fluff me’ center. The lady who worked there was super sweet and friendly towards kids.

I came here for the first time last December. We brought our daughters here to celebrate one of their birthdays. I was really scared to come here because I heard it is really expensive. I thought I would have walked out of here spending a fortune. Luckily, they had a promotion and we didn’t have to sacrifice a mortgage payment to shop.
I came here for my kids but when I walked in, I wanted one for myself. I remembered my age and decided to hold my composure. There are sooooo many choices it’s really hard not to go crazy.
This was an adorable experience. I want to come back here for my kids. Two thumbs up!

My daughter loves it here of course. I think its a little ridiculous to buy under clothes for a bear. Sometimes it is understaffed but, I think it’s worth it as a reward to my daughter to come in and have the total experience. I mean 80 $ for a stuffed bear is insane. Only for very special occassions.

Sure this place is crazy busy, and quite expensive… but isn’t your child is worth it? My son 2 years ago got a dog and today was the 3^rd time I have brought to back for new sound and repairs. This dog goes eveywhere and get pretty beat up because of it. Check my date (it’s Christmas time) Sue saw my son and his poor dog and made time to fix his repairs. Even though the store was busy she took the time to fix him right for FREE! Thank you Sue.

On a day I was feeling a lot under the weather, my boyfriend, being the sweetheart that he is, took me to build my very first Build-​A-​Bear. I was super duper excited! :D
This location is wonderful and when I went there weren’t too many kids. I was able to get everything I needed to complete my Build-​A-​Bear with ease. They have a lot of choices for your teddy bear and now they even have Hello Kitty as well as penguins. I was super stoked for the penguins!
The lady helping me was such a doll and did not care that she was helping a 21-​year old make a bear. She treated me as if I were 5 again and at this moment, I did not mind. It felt nice to feel little again.
I ended up choosing a bear that was made especially for the SF Giants winning the championship last year and my eyes sparkled with excitement. We ended up getting the Giants uniform as well to go along with it. My boyfriend and I both share our passion and love for the SF Giants together so he was even excited to make this bear.
It was such a great experience here and if you ever want to bring your child here, I highly recommend it! Sure it can be a bit pricey but for your child to be able to make their own teddy bear, well I think there’s something magical about that. :)

This location was just average to me. Not that the service was terrible, although they also did not go above and beyond the BEARY best that they could have. Most Build-​a-​bears welcome you with a loud HELLO when you first open the doors, but I just did not get that at this location. I would not say I would never go back here again, I just don’t think it’s as good of a location compared to other Build-​A-​Bears that I have been to.

It’s Christmas season — on a weekend — and there is not enough staff to help customers. We stood in line for stuffing and had to get diverted to record our message on the little recording device (I thought they’d offer us help there, but it was too noisy so we were sent off in a corner. Then we had to get back in line again. Because it was so busy the stuffer did a shoddy job — no stuffing in the feet of our animal. It just didn’t feel right. When we got to the cashier it was waiting time again — probably about 10 minutes. It was not a happy time — and $ 64 later I feel a bit ripped off with the whole experience. (BTW — the cashier gave us some line about «for this animal the stuffing breaks down so you can come back in to add stuffing.» Guess what — she figured out quickly that the thing wasn’t stuffed right. After standing there so long I wasn’t about to try to get back in line to add stuffing… My son loves this place but the next time he wants to go I’m going to have to say no.

Maybe its because I’m about a foot taller than most customers here. I have no shame of running around the store fitting my bear with little tu-tu’s and sparkly pink sunglasses. I’m not going to lie, I AM A FAN! :D Just make sure you don’t come here on a saturday or sunday afternoon, most little kiddies are here making bears. But hey, after all it’s a toy store.

Once I got over my embarrassment of begging my boyfriend to take me there for WEEKS, being so excited to finally go, and the fact that I was the only person there over the age of 8… Haha… I really, really enjoyed the experience!
I carefully picked out a classic design for my new little friend. A bear. A limp and lifeless bear. After filling it up with fluff, giving it a heart, giving it a bath, it’s finally starting to look like a lovable bed buddy you are going to sleep with everyday… despite what your significant other says about it always ending up in his face in the middle of the night, hahaha: D
The last step (and the most fun!) is to pick out an outfit for your animal. This is the part where all the kids (and this out of place twenty-​something year old girl, haha) go crazy running around and deciding how to dress and what to name their bear. As I push and elbow my way to the front of the crowd forming before the outfits, I decide MY bear is going to be a Doctor, heehee.
After you dress and create a birth certificate for your bear, you’re done, and I was pretty pleasantly surprised at how reasonable the price was. We left there $ 25 dollars later, with huge smiles, pictures that will last a lifetime and a very cute little doctor bear that hopefully will support me when he grows up and works full time, haha! Sooo fun for all ages, I’m looking for any excuse (my niece’s birthday coming up) to go back!

I can never avoid this place. Sara has gotten straight A’s in school and gave me the sad eye treatment… AGAIN!!! Once again my weak hearted self fell for the trap. Once I gave here the green light she went crazy. We also got 3 more for our nieces and will give it to them on Xmas. Damm why wasn’t this place available when I was a kid.
(stop dreaming Sergio, you know damm well your dad wouldn’t have bought you shit anyway so shut up and keep day dreaming sergio!)

i guess its a nice idea, but really its just a pain in the ass. I went with my daughter about a month ago. It was slam packed full of people. I thought this was a good sign… I was sadly mistaken. We chose a dog to get stuffed. We stood in line for 20 minutes before another «stuffer» started to help guests. All the while a stupid kid kept running into me. The mom kept apologizing, but the little girl obviously didn’t know what stand still meant. Finally it was our turn. Our «Stuffer», who I later found out was the manager of the place, took forever with the ceremony of stuffing the damn animal. My daughter was 13 months at the time… and not interested in rubbing the heart and making wishes… she just wanted her damn stuffed animal. I kindly asked the woman if we could hurry the process up a little because my daughter was getting fussy and just wanter her new toy. The woman responded with something like… its my duty as a bear-​ka-​teer to make sure every one is made with love and care. All I was thinking is I am giving you my money… you should do what I want to do. I was so relieved when we were finally finished, I left with the stuffed dog, outfit, and didn’t even bother naming it. This whole thing is like one big pain in the ass! I recommend finding out when they are least busy and going then if you even bother going at all.

My son is on the young side as he approaches adolescence. Sometimes, I wish he would grow up faster, but more often I savor his sweet age of innocence and don’t wish to hurry him along. His raging hormones will turn him into someone else soon enough.
So last Friday after his podiatry (ingrown toe nail) surgery, Gayle and I am took him to Build-​A-​Bear to buy another stuffed animal for his collection. It’s probably time for him to move beyond Teddy Bears, but right now it makes him happy. And it’s a reasonable expenditure, as long as you stay away from the accessories.
And regarding Tsada K.‘s previous review: To quote Freud, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Here is where, for about twenty dollars plus the cost of accessories (read: $ 80+), you can witness a small child select a flaccid shell of a bear and hand it to an overly-​cheerful teenager who proceeds to sodomize it (the bear) with a bit of industrial tubing as the child steps on a lever that releases pressurized foam into its (the bear’s) anus.
Then the teenager stitches up its (the bear’s) anus and hands the bear to the child to take to the «Fluffing Table».
It’s all really quite heartwarming.

Look at em all…
Lifeless. Cotton-​less. Heartless; laying all contorted in wooden barrels, just praying that some child, or *ahem* adult, will give it a permanent home outside of the little-​bear condo that kinda looks like little-​bear jail.
I got my ‘niece’ a gift card to Build-​A-​Bear for Christmas and we finally had time to come out to Walnut Creek to make one: I’m surprised there are none in SF besides the one at the ballpark! What happened, Build-​A-​Bear? No one showed you any love in the city? Wrong. Just wrong.
Anyway, We were there for a good 20 minutes picking up, and putting back, those lifeless bears, bunnies, dinosaurs, dogs, polar bears, etc, etc, etc but it was far from boring. It also helped that we came on an essentially empty night. It was quiet and organized but I guess that just means we were the only ones crazy enough to venture to the outdoors during the Massive Storm of 2008:
We were there for a good 45 minutes but hey… bringing a bear to life is a process! You gotta stuff it, give it a heart, sew it, clothe it, accessorize it and finally… pay for it.
*cries*
Okay so apparently the $ 50 gift card was not enough. A $ 60 gift card would not have been enough. Had I known this bear was going to be a D-​I-​V-​A complete with hangbag, flower hair ties, sunglasses, leather boots, 2 outfits — one kinda slutty — I would have put a little extra on that card! Really, I would have! But instead, my brother paid the balance and I left the counter as to not look like a cheap-​ass (: I sat there, perplexed: how the hell did she manage to rack up $ 67.45 on a BEAR?! And why does it have so much STUFF?!
Then that little voice of reason said, «Tita Kristi [note, she is Filipina, I am not] this bear looks just like you!»
Sh*t.
Thanks Build-​A-​Bear. Thanks.

No! I won’t ever go to build a bear again! I took my neice here. We were in here for over an hour and I hated every minute of it.
First the kids get to pick what kind of bear, bunny, turtle, ghost, cat in the hat, whatever animal they want. This usually takes a good 20 minutes and ends in tears when the kid can’t decide between two or three of them. Then they get to go stuff the bear, but first they pick out a heart, kiss it, and make a «beary» special wish! I do think it’s cute though how they tell the kid to step on the pedal to stuff it, even though the guy reaches up and turns a clearly marked «ON/​OFF» switch. Then you get to give the bear a fluff bath which consists of a fake brush and some air being blown through a hose. At this point, you’ve been in the store for 45 minutes. Then you get to the great wall of clothes!!! And after another 45 minutes, you’ve narrowed it down to 3 ridiculously overpriced options. You’re ready to leave, but no! Another step! You have to make a birth certificate for the bear! And I don’t know about you, but watching a kid play hunt and peck with a keyboard for 20 minutes is nerveracking. So finally, you get to pay and be even more enraged spending $ 40 on a bear that will be played with maybe once.
I obviously don’t have kids and I don’t appreciate the douchebaggery of build a bear. I don’t like bratty children who run around wild, or who think they own mommy’s checkbook, and I don’t like being ripped off.

I went to build my first bear (actually a bunny) when I was 26 years old and they still gave me the full «kid» treatment. I mean in a good way. They let me pick my plushie’s heart, choose the amount of fluff to stuff, and kiss her newly sewn back. We went through all the stages of fluffing the fur and dressing her. We also got to make her birth certificate.
Although I was probably older than the employees of the store, they still let me enjoy the task of making my stuffed animal. I think it’d be great to bring my future children here and their friends for a party (they offer birthday packages).