Footage of Indian amusement park misrepresented as showing Canada

A clip of a crammed wave pool attracted disparaging comments on social media in July 2025, as users claimed it showed that most attendees at Canada's Wonderland were immigrants or of Indian origin. But the Ontario amusement park confirmed to AFP that the video does not show crowding at its facility and reverse image searches reveal the footage is from Blueworld Park in India.

"Is that REALLY Canada's Wonderland? Either way, YUCK," reads the caption of a July 16, 2025 X video.

The video of people packed into a wave pool where most of the swimmers do not appear to be white was also shared to Instagram. Text over the footage claims it shows Canada's Wonderland, the country's largest theme park, in Ontario on May 18, 2025.

Searching for additional examples reveals the clip was also linked to Canada in 2024, with versions implying the crowd reflected former prime minister Justin Trudeau's open immigration policies.

As Canada's once long-standing immigration consensus has broken down, AFP has debunked numerous claims about new arrivals, with many targeting people who moved to the country from India.

Comments on the clip displayed insults and one account sharing it appeared to reference a slur for Indian people in its handle.

In June 2025, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue think tank reported a rising trend of anti-South Asian hate speech spread by Canadian extremist accounts amidst high immigration rates and heightened anxieties over housing availability and unemployment (archived here).

While users implied the video supposedly showed a large number of Indian immigrants in Canada, the clip was actually filmed at a wave pool on the other side of the world

"That is not Canada's Wonderland," said Grace Peacock, a spokeswoman for the park, in a July 17 email.

Reverse image search results for the clip show the surroundings match other videos shared online and tagged at Blueworld Park in Kanpur, India (archived here).

Social media posts claimed to have been taken at Blueworld and from the theme park's own Instagram page similarly display the wave pool misleadingly labeled as being in Canada (archived here and here), with the distinctive multi-color slides and the palace-inspired theme park hotel in the background (archive here).

Satellite images of the park on Google Maps also match the slides and buildings seen in the video (archived here).

Photos shared by users to Google Maps for Blueworld Park also visually match the misrepresented video (archived here).

By contrast, official images of the "White Water Bay" wave pool at Wonderland show it is located next to a rollercoaster with a yellow track.

Read more of AFP's reporting on misinformation in Canada here.