There’s a reason Disney employees are called cast members. It gives them a sense of belonging and reminds them that they’re putting on a show. Their job is to pass that onto their customers.

But behind the scenes, these cast members have also been fighting for higher wages. Disneyland Resort reached an agreement last month with union officials to increase the minimum wage it pays union-represented employees to $15 an hour by 2019, following an extended fight between the theme park and its workers over their salaries. A local initiative on the November ballot would force Disney to expand the wage to all 30,000 of its employees, and compel other businesses in Anaheim to up their minimum wages.

The wage hike will be the largest in the resort’s history, Josh D’Amaro, Disneyland Resort president, said in a statement following the agreement, adding that the company’s employees “are at the heart of making our guests’ dreams come true and this meaningful pay increase reflects the valuable roles they play at the resort.”

The smooth operation of Disney theme parks, after all, relies on those workers or cast members. When Disneyland opened, its first day in operation was a disaster. Many of the park’s attractions weren’t in working order yet. Restaurants ran out of food and water fountains ran dry. The line of motorists trying to get in stretched down the freeway in the sweltering Southern California heat.

But it didn’t take long for Disneyland to overcome that first disappointing day. Walt Disney Co.’s DIS, +0.56% first theme park has come to influence the tourism industry in ways big and small. Disneyland’s home of Anaheim is emblematic of Disneyland’s impact: Once a rural community known for its orange groves, it’s now a sprawling city in its own right, chock-full of hotels and motels.

Before Elon Musk founded Tesla TSLA, -2.46% and Steve Jobs helped revolutionize Apple’s brand AAPL, +0.42% there was Walt Disney. And he really knew how to put on a show to create a quintessential American brand. Here are six ways the theme park has already influenced travel and, crucially, spending:

Come rain or shine, Disney encourages patrons to keep shopping

Disneyland is arguably not just one of the country’s first theme parks, but also one of its first shopping malls, too. “Disneyland was, and still is, a mall,” James Farrell, the late professor of history and American studies at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, wrote in his book, ‘One Nation Under Goods.’ “It’s a mall — in the original sense of a pedestrian promenade — and it’s a shopping center too.”

When visitors first enter Disneyland, they stroll down Main Street U.S.A. Inspired in part by the hometowns of Hollywood set design Harper Goff (Fort Collins, Colo.) and Walt Disney himself (Marceline, Mo.), the architecture and decor of the gift shops and restaurants located on Main Street U.S.A. were meant to recreate the feeling of being in the downtown shopping district of a small American town around the turn of the century.

Disneyland was built almost concurrently with the first shopping mall in the United States, the Southdale Center in Indiana, which opened in 1956. Walt Disney’s views on urban design were very much inspired by the Southdale Center’s architect Victor Gruen.

Unlike most American towns, visitors could pass through the shops of Main Street U.S.A. without going outside. Because the shopping mall concept had not yet spread across America’s suburbs, Main Street U.S.A. was therefore the first time many consumers experienced walking from one store right into another indoors.

These days, shopping indoors may no longer be as unusual as it was back when Disneyland opened. But maintaining that design has its advantages: The air-conditioned shops provide a refuge from the Southern California heat, meaning guests still flock to these stores with wallet in hand.

Disneyland’s imprint can be seen on shopping malls and districts around the country. “There are tons of shopping districts that have taken the concept of old-timey America to create environment,” said Jim Hill, a theme park historian and blogger.

The Grove, the popular open-air mall in Los Angeles, seemingly borrowed from Disneyland with its vintage architectural style, complete with an electric trolley. And the country’s largest mall — the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn. — has an amusement park inside.

Walt Disney was a televangelist—selling to parents and children alike

Walt Disney was something of a televangelist. He knew how to market to children and adults, and make sure both his message and products were passed from generation to generation. Before Disneyland first opened, Walt Disney hosted a series of television specials called “Walt Disney’s Disneyland,” which helped finance the theme park’s construction and fuel excitement for its opening. The park’s opening day was also captured in a live special, “Dateline: Disneyland.”

The Disney brand — like a toothpaste, football team or even religion — was passed down from parent to child. “Baby boomers grew up watching Disneyland be built up on TV, creating a group of emotional stockholders in the company,” said Jamie O’Boyle, senior analyst at the Center for Cultural Studies and Analysis, a research institute in Philadelphia.

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The emotional connection that formed between the television audience and Disneyland soon morphed into a brand loyalty not unlike a religious conviction. And in that manner, a trip to Disneyland (and later Walt Disney World in Florida) was like visiting a place that was part shopping mall, part cathedral. “Disney created a place that people treated like a pilgrimage,” O’Boyle said.

In medieval times, Catholics would travel long distances to visit the nearest major town or city with an impressive cathedral. They wore special clothing and would bring back relics. They toured somber depictions of the Stations of the Cross, which O’Boyle likened to “the first dark ride” — the genre of amusement park rides that includes “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “The Haunted Mansion.”

A trip to Disneyland reflects those traditions. People dress in Disney-inspired clothing, collect trinkets and see the attractions. Even the focal point of the castle calls to mind the grandeur of cathedrals like Paris’ Notre Dame. The placement of both Disneyland and Walt Disney World even accounted for Americans’ ability to travel long distances by car, as both parks were located conveniently near major highways.

None of this comes cheap. Turning a trip to Disneyland or Walt Disney World into a pseudo-rite of passage for families has also allowed Disney to push the envelope in terms of charging tourists more each year to get to experience this pilgrimage. Earlier this year the park hiked admission prices by $7 to $117 for “regular” day prices. “Peak” tickets jumped $11, to $135. “Value” tickets remain at $97.

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Disney helped pioneer dynamic pricing strategies to lure more customers

While the cost of a ticket to Disneyland has changed over the years, one thing hasn’t: Disney has always found clever ways to get guests to spend more money.

When Disneyland opened, admission was just $1 for adults and 50 cents for children — but guests had to pay additional fees to get tickets for the park’s rides. The cost of the ride tickets varied based on how thrilling or popular they were. Initially, these tickets were ranked on a scale from A to C, but the company later added more-expensive D and E tickets for new attractions. To this day, the most thrilling rides at theme parks are often referred to as “E ticket” attractions.

Starting in the 1980s, Disney began including rides in the admission price to its theme parks after other theme parks started to do so. But since then the company has found new strategies to get guests to spend more money. In particular, Disney has introduced ticketed events known as “upcharge options” where visitors can shell out for experiences like a $95 dessert party.

Recently, Disney offered guests the chance to get a sneak peek of the new Pixar Pier section of the Disney California Adventure theme park in Anaheim. Tickets to the six-hour event cost nearly $300, more than double the typical cost of admission. Other theme parks have copied this model: Universal Studios offered its first iteration of Halloween Horror Nights, its own separately-ticketed event, starting in 1991.

Over the years, Disney has also of course increased its prices. Last year, Disney introduced a tiered pricing structure, where the cost of admission to its American theme parks varies based on the time of year. As of February, a single day’s admission to Disneyland can cost as much as $135 for an adult, while a one-day ticket to the Magic Kingdom will set an adult visit back up to $129.

It introduced Americans to monorails so they would spend more money

Transportation was always in Disneyland’s DNA: Before Walt Disney set out to build the theme park, he created the Carolwood Pacific Railroad, a rideable miniature railroad located in the backyard of his Los Angeles home. And Disneyland Railroad was one of the park’s opening day attractions, shepherding guests in a scenic loop of the park.

Four years after Disneyland opened, the park entered the history books when the Disneyland Monorail began operation. At the time, the monorail on had one station. Nevertheless, it was the first active monorail built in North America. Walt Disney famously believed in monorails as the future of public transportation, including them as an element in his utopian vision of an American city, the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow.

Other Disney theme parks now have their own monorails. The monorail system at Walt Disney World is one of the largest in the world, and politicians even cite it as a model of a well-run public transportation system. While monorails never quite caught on as Walt Disney intended, more did crop up around the U.S.

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Travelers at airports — including those in Orlando and Newark — ride them to get to their terminals and, yes, monorails allow them to save both time and energy so they have more of both to shop at duty-free stores. In fact, visitors to Seattle and Las Vegas can hop on a monorail to visit major tourist attractions.

Disney has another motive behind keeping the monorails in operation. By providing guests to its resorts with easy transportation from their hotels to the theme parks, Disney reduces the likelihood that visitors will venture to other tourist attractions and take their money with them.

Disney was among the first companies to always keep selling

Blending fantasy and reality touches every aspect of a Disney vacation. At restaurants, you can dine while Mickey and Minnie walk around you. Walking down Main Street, you are serenaded by the Dapper Dans barbershop quartet singers. It creates an “experience” for fans, but it’s also an effective way of bombarding patrons with the brand. A man in a Mickey Mouse costume is a living, breathing (and walking) billboard. “Disneyland isn’t a passive place,” O’Boyle said. “It made entertainment much more interactive.”

Disneyland’s success in creating interactive environments has driven other tourist locations and industries to explore new ways to pump up the guest experience. Destinations ranging from Las Vegas casinos and major museums to even Broadway plays have sought to infuse interactive features and entertainment into their offerings.

But that too costs money. Those new features then become marketing fodder that will attract more visitors who will spend more money for an upgraded experience. “People don’t want to look at stuff in glass cases anymore — they want something you can engage with,” O’Boyle said.

It fueled the lucrative industry surrounding fan culture

Disneyland’s most profound effect has arguably been on the amusement park industry itself. While the park isn’t generally believed to be the first theme park — California’s Knott’s Berry Farm and Holiday World (previously known as Santa Claus Land) in Indiana jockey for that title — it certainly defined and revolutionized the concept.

One of the key ways Walt Disney did this was by incorporating pre-existing characters and stories into the park’s different sections and rides. “Walt took classic carnival rides and reinvented them,” Hill said. “Dumbo the Flying Elephant is really a ‘spinner’ attraction you can find anywhere, but it’s the characters that made it special.”

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Existing characters and media franchises — intellectual properties, or IPs, in theme park lingo — are now inescapable. Universal Studios CMCSA, +1.00% has Harry Potter; Six Flags SIX, +1.22% has the characters from DC Comics and Looney Tunes; and Ohio’s Cedar Point FUN, +0.44% rollercoaster park has Snoopy and Charlie Brown.

New sections of Walt Disney World and Disneyland with a “Star Wars” theme will open next year. Disney is banking on the notion that the saga’s fans will pay a hefty sum to experience the world created by George Lucas, as “Harry Potter” fans did with Universal Studios’ offerings based on the entertainment franchise created by J.K. Rowling. The opening of an area themed after the film “Avatar” at Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Orlando led it to jump one spot in the ranking of most-attended theme parks in the world from seventh to sixth in 2017, thanks to a 15.3% surge in visitors, according to the Themed Entertainment Association.

Some Disney theme park fans have resisted the shift toward incorporating film franchises into all of the company’s theme parks. In recent years, Disney has added rides based on films like “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “Frozen” to Epcot, which had previously been devoid of much influence from the company’s franchises. Some fans argued that this could take away from the educational experience that had long been central to the vision for the theme park.

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