WDW – The News from Sonnystone Acres

And now to June

Posted on June 7, 2026 by Jo Mayne Casey

The gardens are keeping us busy here at the Acres.

I guess I won’t be starting a separate blog for the gardens. The days are just flying by, filled with graduations, recitals, healthcare visits, and actual Work in the Gardens, so I’ll just have to share its progress here. One never knows, but at this juncture it’s shaping up to be one of my best efforts.

Yesterday morning Samantha and I rolled out early for the Willard Library Book Sale. That afternoon the whole fam came together for Nova’s singing recital.

It is our annual tradition to see how long we can put off turning on our air conditioning. We do this partly because we are cheap and don’t want a big utility bill, but I think it’s an old-person thing…I like to tell our kids and grandkids about how we didn’t have air conditioning back in our day, how we toughed it out sitting in front of fans that could cut our hands off if we reached into the cage, and slept on the basement floor (the best coolant) on a pallet to survive. Maybe you had a/c in your home, but my dad truly believed he caught colds from window units, so it was 1967 when we finally moved to a home with central air. Anyway, the humidity is horrible and I am a heavy sweat-er, but I consider it training for our upcoming visit to Disney World in Florida.

Yes, we’re headed back to Disney, specifically to ride the newly-updated Buzz Lightyear Space Command in Magic Kingdom and the revamped Rockin’ Rollercoast, now featuring the Muppets over at Hollywood Studios. The Great Thunder Mountain Railway is another “new” coaster over at MK; it used to be like the old wooden rollercoasters, but they’ve put in all new track to make it smoother. At Epcot, they switched the Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure from 3D to 2D, so I’d like to check that out, and the Carousel of Progress is going to shut down in a month to upgrade, so I need to refresh my memory of the current one.

Recently I’ve been asked by a couple of folks if I still ride the rides. We have ridden every ride there and there are some I won’t ride again (I’m looking at you, Tower of Terror), but most of them I’m up for. This trip we’ll only be there for three days, so we’ve prioritized the aforementioned rides and have plans to crawl through some resort lounges, eat some good food, and drink fancy drinks. We have Lightning Lane passes for Our favorite-of-all-time-ride, Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, to wrap up our trip on Wednesday. Despite the oppressive weather this time of year, we will be having a great time – I know where the air conditioning is!

I’m still coughing, dammit, so started a round of steroids to see if we can get this thing under control.

I hope you’re enjoying these last weeks of weeks of Spring in your neck of the woods.

Peace

2020, Birthdays, Sonnystoners on Holiday

Weekly Wrap-up

Posted on March 1, 2020March 1, 2020 by Jo Mayne Casey

I would say that this has been the Best Birthday Week Ever, but I’ve had some pretty good Birthday Weeks so I’ll simply say that I’ve had Another Best Birthday Week. Starting on the 23rd with the Monorail Crawl (going from the Polynesian to the Grand Floridian to the Contemporary stopping for Rum Drinks and Birthday wishes), and ending up on the evening of the 28th riding the Rise of the Resistance in Galaxy’s Edge, it has been charmed.

Oh, the weather was cold and windy, but we Laugh in the face of Weather.

While we were in central Florida we visited Aunt Shirley in Melbourne, staying the night with Cousin Kim. I want to visit them every month or so now, though their weather was no better.

I was thinking about all the different Jos I’ve been–a different person every year celebrating Birthdays 1-67. Not all of mySelves were Great, but each one brought its own gift. You couldn’t pay me to be 20 again…but 40 was nice… Oh, well, she’s in here somewhere..

We cruised on home yesterday, already thinking about going back. I haven’t gone through all of the pictures of the trip yet, so I’ll do a Travelogue-type post later this week.