celebrate New Year's Eve in Times Square

This past November a couple of friends and I went to New York for the day. While there we decided that we would spend New Years Eve 2009 in New York City. We even shook on it to seal the deal. I am definitely set on going, whether they are or not is a whole different story. lol.

no food, no water, no toilets for 8 hrs. and its cold

Did it for 06-07 and absolutely loved it. A much better experience than I had imagined. The crowd looks worse than it really is. Hardly any drinking and lots of people of many different ages. Loved it. Just booked another trip for this year to do the same thing!
It is true though that there are no bathrooms so sneak a few snacks with you and just a LITTLE bit of water. Oh and dont leave right away because thats when claustrophobia will set in, wait till the bulk of people leave.

I was watching the ball drop last night and I was thinking how fun it would be to be there and celebrate the beginning of a new year, at least once in my life.

i will be tired, and probably wont have a place to pee, but first times are akward sometimes… i will live it to the max

...I will add this again. But this year it don’t look like it will happen. And I really need that spot, so bye bye goal, for now!

I saw the ball drop for 2002…so cold!!! Cool to have done it.

Froze my butt off for 7 hours to hold a good spot and didn’t drink a thing so I wouldn’t have to go to the bathroom, but it was so much fun being there with so many people!

It was quite cold and rainy that night, but pretty incredible with all the thousands of people there.

I can say that my back was absolutely killing me (and, I am a young, healthy, active person) during this experience. However, for what it’s worth - and just by chance - I was with the closest section facing the Waterford Crystal ball and in the 2nd row of people from the front. That was nice. I made a mistake by not bringing water or food with me.

See, with respect to where I would end up standing, the large amount of time I did stand (just a little shy of 9 hours), and the food aspects, the assumptions turned out to be incorrect.

Namely, the crowd started forming around 2 PM (or thereabouts). At 3:15 PM, I started following the masses down Broadway. Everyone just had to walk until they couldn’t walk any further because of space. So, you stood wherever you were “destined” to be (in terms of crowd-density). I was lucky. However, just the same, there really isn’t any place where you can get any drink or food when you’re standing there because you are barracaded in. (Now, you can leave, but you would have to give up your spot too!) By the way, I doubt that they allowed people to sit in chairs. At least, I didn’t see anyone doing that and I didn’t think that space would permit.

That said, I did get the Times Square hat and Discover confetti pom-pom. And, yes, I finally spent New Year’s Eve in NYC just to see what all of the camera-attention is about!