Thousands of people are expected to head to downtown Reno on New Year's Eve to close out 2021. It will be a more traditional celebration that includes fireworks and a lot fewer COVID-19 restrictions than one year ago. Some visitors are already in town to ring in 2022.

"We're excited to death because of the snow," Tom Snedden, Casa Grande, Arizona resident said. "Believe it or not, we love the snow. We know everybody here. We come to the Eldorado a lot. Everybody there knows us and they just take good care of us."

The downtown hotels and casinos are typically at or near capacity on New Year's Eve. The Whitney Peak Hotel has activities planned for the celebration.

"We do have a cargo show that night, so it's Borgore and it's almost sold out," Rachel Zunino, Marketing Manager for Whitney Peak said. "We're doing an all-night happy hour in the restaurant and then we're doing club lounge specials, as well."

Its restaurant already has about 60 covers for New Year's Eve. Zunino says about 70 percent of the hotel rooms are booked and that they are filling up by the hour, thanks to improving weather.

"Just between the snow and then the weather looking like it's clearing up again, it's looking like people can kind of come into town now," Zunino said. "It's going to be a very busy evening."

Most of the guests come from the Bay Area and other nearby states. Many of them like to visit other local bars and restaurants in the downtown area. The Silver Peak is counting on a lot more foot traffic, Friday night, ahead of the midnight countdown.

"Looking forward to people coming back out and experiencing a little more downtown," Christian Mueller, Bar Manager for The Silver Peak said. "We're definitely staffed accordingly in hopes that we have quite a few people coming down."

The restaurant is used to large crowds but it missed some of those for quite some time while capacity limits and other restrictions were in place. The larger crowds and events are returning though.

"We've had a few of the crawls, definitely New Year's, our holiday has been definitely increased with the opening up of public spaces," Mueller said.

Mueller says people usually like to stay indoors for much of the night but move outside as midnight closes in. That is when people start to migrate closer to the the larger casinos.

"We always look forward with the fireworks and more people coming into town, glad people are finally able to come over the hill," Mueller said.

Virginia Street will be closed to traffic from First Street to Sixth Street, starting on Friday at 9:00 p.m. It will reopen at 9:00 a.m., Saturday.