I use a D70 still
I want the best quality picture thus will tryto shoot RAW at ISO 200 for very intresting scene. The next best thing would be JPG Fine Larger format but still at ISO 200. When you are doing night photography the lower the ISO the better as you are not worry about having not enough exposure time since you are doing long exporsure shots.
My aperture is normally kept to f11. I might change it from f8 to f16 if I am bracketing a shot. But there are instances that I might play with even f1.8 on my 50mm or f2.8,f3.5 eg. ..to get a shallow depth of field for some scene where I might mix it up with a close up object against a background scene. My WB is normally set to Auto -2. To save time with editing colour I try to "cheat" by setting colour to IIIa sRGB to get nice vibrate colour. I take long exposure with speed ranging from creating dark shape at 1/60 to as long as 1 min...sometime even longer...if the shot calls for it. I leave NR mode on most of the time in case I am too lazy to use Ninja plugin in my photoshop program to clean up the shot. Some NR by my camera is better then no NR.(Noise Reduction for those who don;t know) Yes NR can take a while but hell I have the whole month to shoot! heh.
Apart from my camera and lens..to me the most important items to bring for night shooting would be a sturdy tripod like my Manfrotto 190 and also to trigger all my shots from a wireless remote. All this to minimise vibration effecting the clarity of my shoots. Take note of some special fairground site or places that have allevated wooden walkways. Placing your tripod on them to take long exposure will be a challege as people walking even a distance off can offset wooden plank and move your camera about slightly. You might not see it but your camera image will later show you that it did
If you have a external flash, that would come in handy to "paint" some shots. Since you are shooting on long exposure, you can set your flash to do multi-flash and adjust the flash power range something just shot of a full flash. What I do is hand hold the flash and manual fire off the flash aiming all over the place I know is within the frame of my shot. This way I can bring in more light to places that is way too dark to capture any details. If you have colour gel for your flash...even better..put one on and set off some portion of your scene with another colour taint tot he building wall, a structure..etc.
Normally I will take a few nights to shoot the entire festive scene. First night shoot less but take note and use my time to plan my shots at each site. Yes till today from the first time I started learning photography, I alway take notes on places and my shooting mode so I can go home to review my shots and technique. That is really the only way to learn. Then I will break my shooting spree into maybe 3 nights. You do need to break it into a few trips as some scene might be nice when capture with setting sun after glow in the background as the Christmas lights are lit. And becasue you can not be in a few spots at the same time for the limited time of the sunset, you will have to revist a site again to capture it with another night of after glow.
Most important of all...always shoot on weekdays instead of weekends for obvious reasons
Okay that is basically what I do and this year will be no difference heh...
Happy shooting....