New York City might get all the attention on New Year’s Eve, with networks broadcasting live from Times Square, but Atlanta is a better place to be in some respects.
Financial website WalletHub compared the 100 most populated U.S. cities across three key dimensions — entertainment and food, costs, and safety and accessibility — to determine the best spots for celebrating New Year’s Eve.
Wallethub then evaluated those dimensions using 28 relevant metrics, each of which was graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the most favorable conditions for New Year’s Eve partiers.
Sure, New York City finished on top, with score of 67.50. Las Vegas was a close second with 67.39 points, followed by Orlando with 66.50.
In the fourth spot was the ATL, with 66.03.
The good news is Atlanta was No. 2 overall for entertainment and food, helped by our first-place finish for legality of fireworks.
The bad news is more than half the cities in WalletHub’s analysis can celebrate cheaper than Atlanta can. Despite our No. 1 ranking for availability of affordable fine dining, we were No. 26 for restaurant meal costs and No. 30 for average price of a New Year’s Eve party ticket.
Even worse, Atlanta was near the bottom — No. 96 — for safety and accessibility. We were No. 1 for forecasted precipitation on New Year’s Eve, No. 34 for walkability and No. 48 for traffic congestion.
You can check out the full analysis on WalletHub.com.
