Pick your neighbourhood around the walk home, not the countdown
New Year's Eve in New York is decided at 12:30am, not at midnight. Wherever you are when the confetti lands, you then have to get somewhere warm. Trains are jammed, there are effectively no cabs, and rideshare pricing is at its worst hour of the year. So the only question that really matters when you're booking is this: from wherever I'm going to be at midnight, can I walk home in half an hour?
That one question rules out the neighbourhood most people book first.
Why staying inside Times Square backfires
If you want the ball drop, the honest picture: NYPD closes the surrounding streets during the day and funnels people into fenced viewing pens. Once you're in a pen you can't leave and come back. There are no public bathrooms in them, backpacks and large bags aren't allowed, and neither is alcohol. People start lining up early in the afternoon for a midnight event, in the cold, standing the entire time.
Staying inside that zone doesn't get you out of any of it. What it does get you is a room you can't easily reach on the 31st, streets closed to vehicles, and a hotel rate at its annual peak. If the ball drop is your one non-negotiable, stay a walkable distance outside the closures and go in on foot early. Don't pay a premium to sleep in the middle of it.
What we'd actually do instead
Central Park at midnight is the better night, and it's the one most visitors never hear about. There's a fireworks display in the park at midnight, and New York Road Runners has run a midnight four-miler through the park on December 31st for decades, complete with a costume contest before the start. Check their calendar before you build the evening around it, but it's been a fixture for a very long time.
From East 62nd Street you walk in at the Fifth Avenue entrance at 60th, about eight minutes from our door, and you're inside the park in another two. You watch, you walk home, you're in bed by one. No pens, no barricades, no waiting three hours for a train at 42nd Street.
The other good version is dinner and a walk. Book somewhere for 9pm, take your time, and be outside near midnight somewhere with sky above you. The city is genuinely beautiful that night once you're off the avenues.
Neighbourhood by neighbourhood
East of Central Park, the 60s to 80s. Twenty minutes on foot from midnight in the park, one stop from Midtown on the Q, and quiet residential blocks when you want to sleep. Our block, so take the bias into account, but the walk-home maths is the whole argument.
Upper West Side. Same logic from the other side of the park, and equally good for the fireworks. Slightly more of a hike to Midtown for anything on the 30th or the 1st.
Midtown outside the closure zone, say east of Lexington. Fine. You're close enough to walk into Times Square early and far enough to get back out. Check exactly which streets are closed before you commit to a block.
Times Square itself. Only if you've decided the pens are the trip and you want to be inside the perimeter for the whole day. It's the most expensive night of the year for the least comfortable version of it.
Downtown or Brooklyn. Good for a bar or a house party New Year's, bad if you want the park fireworks and no train at 1am.
Practical things that make the night better
Book by early November. New Year's Eve is one of the two nights of the year where availability disappears rather than just getting expensive, and the 30th and 31st go first.
The subway runs 24 hours, including that night, which is the one bit of infrastructure you can rely on. It will be slow and full around Midtown between midnight and 2am. It'll be perfectly normal five stops uptown.
Dress for standing still. Layers, hat, and boots that handle wet pavement. Midnight temperatures are usually around freezing, and if you're outdoors from 10pm you'll feel every degree.
Eat before 10pm or after midnight, not in between. Kitchens in the middle of the evening are running fixed menus at a premium, and the good walk-in options mostly happen either side of that window.
January 1st is the quietest morning of the year in New York. Nothing opens early, the streets are empty, and a walk through the park before ten is one of the better hours you'll spend in this city. Having a kitchen for that morning coffee is worth more than you'd think, because very little else is open.
The short version
Stay outside the closures, within walking distance of wherever you'll be at midnight. Use Central Park rather than Times Square if you have the choice. Book by early November, dress like you'll be standing outside for three hours, and don't plan anything for the morning of the 1st.
We're on East 62nd between First and Second, eight minutes from the park. Stay three nights or three weeks, it's your apartment.