Best & Worst Cities To Celebrate New Year's Eve
With New Year's Eve just a few weeks away and 70 percent of Americans celebrating the day in some way, including large, organized events and party-hopping, the personal finance website WalletHub took an in-depth look at 2015's Best & Worst Cities to Celebrate New Year's Eve.
To help New Year's Eve celebrants find the most fun and affordable spots for counting down to 2016, WalletHub's analysts compared the 100 most populated cities across 17 key metrics. Their data set ranges from the legality of fireworks to the average price of a New Year's Eve party ticket to the forecasted precipitation on New Year's Eve.
After all, local businesses are notorious for hiking up their prices when big crowds are in town for a major event. The cheapest hotel rates in New Orleans and Atlantic City, for instance, can rise in excess of 300 and 500 percent, respectively, on New Year's Eve compared with their normal prices. The last thing you want to do in the final hours of 2015 is ruin your finances over one night of entertainment. Click here for the complete list.
Best Cities to Celebrate New Year's Eve
1. Orlando, FL
2. San Francisco, CA
3. Atlanta, GA
4. San Diego, CA
5. Scottsdale, AZ
6. Minneapolis, MN
7. Portland, OR
8. Cincinnati, OH
9. Las Vegas, NV
10. Honolulu, HI
Worst Cities to Celebrate New Year's Eve
91. San Bernardino, CA
92. Arlington, TX
93. Charlotte, NC
94. Garland, TX
95. Laredo, TX
96. Fort Worth, TX
97. Hialeah, FL
98. Jersey City, NJ
99. Newark, NJ
100. North Las Vegas, NV
Key Stats
The average price of a New Year's Eve party ticket in Pittsburgh, Pa., is seven times higher than in Greensboro, N.C.
The price of a three-star hotel on New Year's Eve is seven times higher in Honolulu than in Tucson, Ariz.
Orlando, Fla., has 6 times as many restaurants per capita as Phoenix, Ariz.
Miami has 45 times as many jewelry shops per capita as North Las Vegas, Nev.
Orlando, Fla., has 21 times as many nightlife options per capita as Hialeah, Fla.
The violent crime rate in Detroit is 40 times higher than in Irvine, Calif.
Methodology
To find the top spots for celebrating New Year's Eve, WalletHub's analysts compared the 100 most populated cities across three key dimensions: 1) Entertainment & Food, 2) Costs and 3) Safety & Accessibility. With regard to their sample, "city" refers to city proper and excludes surrounding metro areas.
Next, they compiled 17 relevant metrics, which are listed below with their corresponding weights. Each metric was given a value between 0 and 100, wherein 100 is the best value for that metric and 0 is the worst.
They then calculated the overall score for each city and ranked them using the weighted average across all metrics.
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