Which fictional world would be the most fun to vacation in?
If I could vacation in any fictional world, I think I’d choose Happy Feet.
Partly because it would be fun. Antarctica, but with dancing penguins. Vast sheets of ice, deep blue water, enormous skies, music everywhere. There would be something wonderfully ridiculous about sliding across the ice on your stomach and joining a penguin dance-off before dinner.
But there is something else that attracts me to that world. Mumble is different. Everyone else has a heartsong. He dances. In the beginning, that difference is treated as a problem. He doesn’t fit the pattern. He makes people uncomfortable. He is expected to become more like everyone else. But eventually, the thing that makes him different becomes the thing he has to offer.
Maybe that is part of what holidays can do for us. The best holiday is not simply somewhere different; it is somewhere that allows you to be different for a while. Away from the familiar routines, roles and expectations, you can let go of the person you normally have to be. You can wander rather than hurry. Eat at strange times. Spend hours looking at something that serves no useful purpose. Talk to people you will probably never meet again. Be curious. Be playful. Pay attention. Perhaps even dance when everyone else is singing.
And then there is the landscape itself. The world of Happy Feet is spectacular, but it is also fragile. The film never lets us forget that the penguins’ world is affected by choices made far beyond it. The beauty creates wonder; the vulnerability creates responsibility.
So I’d go for the fun: the ice, the music, the dancing penguins. But I’d stay for the wonder.
The Afterword 
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