Happy 5th Birthday, Tagrel!
We would like to congratulate Tagrel on it’s fifth anniversary.
“Uh, what’s Tagrel?” you say?
Well first of all, it’s supposed to be pronounced Tah-grell with the stress on the second syllable—but more on that in a minute. And it’s the brainchild of this guy, Dave Card. Dave doesn’t always wear a Santa hat. I just think this photo captures the essence of Dave.
While Brian and I have been around Orlando and Walt Disney World more than we care to admit, we really had only a passing knowledge of the huge fan community that had grown up around it until we started Owner’s Locker. We had heard of a couple of unofficial WDW websites but certainly never dreamed that there were over 350 of them.
When we began the process of trying to understand how this unofficial community functioned, several names kept popping up like The DIS, MouseSavers, and AllEars. And Tagrel. Tagrel? What is that?
Well, it turns out that Dave Card is quite the pioneer in on-line communities and wanted a user name that was unique for use the sites he frequented. That’s where Tagrel came from.
More importantly, Dave was right at the forefront when the on-line Disney fan community first began. And then, as social networking became more popular (and a lot of sites shunned this phenomenon , Dave gravitated toward his own site and Tagrel the site was born. Exactly five years ago today, in fact.
Tagrel is a fun site, full of a lot of nice, very friendly people. It’s not a huge business. It doesn’t have an axe to grind; no position to push. It’s just a warm and fuzzy retreat that a lot of people are quite passionate about. It’s quirky but inclusive if that makes sense. That’s why the photo of Dave says so much.
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The best way I can define the site is to say that you really have to visit it to understand it. And these photos will give you an idea of what the folks at Tagrel are like. Have a look at the way some of their Lockers come back into the warehouse (I leave it to you to find out why there’s a penguin on them!).
Oh, and no one pronounces Tagrel the way Dave intended. In fact, the last time I spoke to Dave, even he had given up. No more Tah-grell…it’s just Tagrel…and we hope it lasts a long, long time.
Thanks and congratulations, Dave…and Happy Birthday, Tagrel!!
