Top tips for (mostly) beating the crowds at Walt Disney World

The holiday season is one of the busiest times of the year at Walt Disney World. It's also one of the most festive. Combine those two things with a total lack of planning (!!) and you've got a recipe for DIS-aster (see what I did there?). Here are my top tips for (mostly) beating the crowds at Walt Disney World, no matter what time of year you visit.

1. PLAN, PLAN, PLAN and plan again - And then be prepared to be flexible. It's important to plan your trip well in advance, but even the best laid plans can go horribly wrong if you don't account for some flexibility. Check out sites like WDWPrepSchool.com and TouringPlans.com for crowd calendars to find out what parks they recommend on each day and do you best to stick with it! But be prepared to switch things up to keep your family happy, rested and fed.

2. Go early in the day and go back late in the day - If you're a family travelling with little ones, they won't know you're on vacation and they probably won't sleep in anyway. Take advantage of those early wake times and hit the parks before opening or just at rope drop. You'll squeeze in more rides and attractions in a few hours' time and when the true crowds begin pouring into the parks, you'll be headed back to your resort for lunch/nap/regroup, all the while thinking to yourself, "SUCKERS!" Then, when other people are heading back to their resorts at dinner time (or later), you'll be heading back to a less-crowded park to use your FastPasses.

3. Use FastPasses in the afternoon - As stated above, if you're going to the Parks in the morning, you won't need a FastPass for most attractions because the lines will be short. Save your FastPass allocations for the evening hours and be sure to sashay past all those other suckers waiting in line 190 minutes for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train.

4. Get your character greetings out of the way elsewhere - Unless you've got a little girl in your life who is hell bent on meeting Tiana, Rapunzel, Elsa and Anna, you can meet all of the other princesses (Belle, Snow White, Ariel, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella) at character meals. There's no FastPass to meet Anna and Elsa, and the line can get looooong. So if your list of ladies is short, book a meal at Akershus in Epcot's Norway pavilion and thank me later. Same goes with Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy and Pluto - best place to meet them is at Chef Mickey's in the Contemporary.

So there you have it folks, those are some of my best tips for beating the Disney crowds.