Best Time to Book Hotels: The best hotels in NYC and the best family hotels in NYC get booked months in advance. Reserve a place to stay as early as possible.

Best time to avoid crowds: The deep winter months of January through early March offer your best chance to see the city without being mobbed by tourists, though you’ll trade lower airfare and hotel rates for frigid temperatures. Despite the increase in family tourism, the summer months can also be surprisingly quiet in New York, as many locals head for the coast. Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends are best bets for calmer crowds minus the cold.

Best Time to See Shows: It’s easiest to find show tickets during the quieter months of January and February, and in the early fall after the summer tourists have gone home. 2-for-1 tickets to over twenty of Broadway’s most popular shows are available during Broadway Week, held twice yearly in September and January. Summer travelers will have the best luck over the Fourth of July weekend, which generally sees a massive drop in ticket sales. Show tickets are hardest to come by during the last two weeks of the year, when blockbusters are reliably and constantly sold out. The Broadway season starts in September, making that month a great time to score tickets to new shows that haven’t yet generated a lot of buzz. (Tickets to these same shows can be a lot harder to come by in May and June, after the Tony Award nominees have been announced.) Theaters are typically closed on Mondays (though there are plenty of exceptions), and travelers hoping to attend a live TV show taping should note that many late night shows go on hiatus in mid-to-late August and April.