IKEA has reportedly banned people from playing hide and seek in its stores citing safety reasons.
“It’s hard to control,” IKEA Group spokeswoman Martina Smedberg told Bloomberg.
“We need to make sure people are safe in our stores, and that’s hard to do if we don’t even know where they are.”
The news resulted in disappointment for the several thousand people who were quite excited to participate in hide-and-seek events across Ikea stores in Eindhoven, Amsterdam and Utrecht.
Over 32,000 people had signed up over Facebook to participate in the event at Ikea’s Eindhoven store with 19,000 reportedly registered as interested in a game in Amsterdam and 12,000 in Utrecht.
The hide and seek events were inspired by the success of a game held in a Belgium store last year in which 500 adults participated.
Elise De Rijck, who had organised the event, told Bloomberg that people were found hiding in fridges, under stuffed toys, under blue Ikea shopping bags and in the storage space beneath beds.
She said “Sometimes it’s fun just to do some childish things. Ikea is like an extremely large living room.
“We played hide-and-seek the whole day.
“It was really exhausting, but so much fun.”
The organizers are currently in search for new locations for the games, Bloomberg reported.
