Bob Varley - a Valued Member of the Disney Community

I struggled with whether I should do this or not and eventually settled myself to the fact that I needed to do it.  As many of you may know, I am an avid podcast listener. Over the past few weeks, my job has kept me very busy and I haven’t had as much time to listen to podcasts or post on my blog,

I am downloading episodes last week and I noticed there wasn’t a new episode of the “DIS Unplugged” which is one of the podcasts I subscribe to. I didn’t think much of it until I listened to WDW Radio this Monday and found out that Bob Varley has passed away.

I couldn’t believe how much this affected me. I was deeply saddened by this news and still am today. Apparently, he thought he had food poisoning, but whatever it was turned out to be a lot worse and we have lost a great member of the Disney community.

For those of you who don’t know Bob, he was the comic relief on the show. He was constantly being ribbed for the way he spoke, the amount of paper he wasted, or the amount of time he took for segments. I felt bad for Bob sometimes for the teasing he took, but I knew inside that the other members of the show did it out of love and I really believe Bob enjoyed it. You could tell Bob had a huge heart and genuinely enjoyed helping people.

I didn’t know Bob personally but I really felt like we were friends. For those of you that listen to podcasts, you know that these people bring us into their lives every week and we feel like we really know them. It was like the first time I met Lou Mongello at Magicmeets. I felt like I was seeing and old friend again even though it was the first time we met. That is how I felt about Bob. I felt like he was an old friend and I’m sorry I never had the honor to meet him.

Bob was truly a lucky man. He had the fortune to have great friends and had the fortune of doing something he loved. His love of Disney was obvious and his supporters in the community were many. You can really see Bob's effect on people when you look at the posts on the DIS boards.

I know that Pete, John, Kevin, Corey, and Julie must be absolutely devastated and my message to them is “take your time.” We will all be here when you are ready to continue. We know it will never be the same without Bob but we also know that the five of you will still make it the great podcast that we have come to know and love.

We will miss you Bob, but I’ll always think of you when I see “Interventions” at Epcot…..

A nice tribute can be found here.