You are very correct that the primary issue with parades in WDW is how they are treated, but climate has EVERYTHING to do with how they end up in such horrible condition. How often do you see Disneyland send out a parade in the rain? Almost never. Now how often do they do it in Florida? All the time! Fun fact: Festival of Fantasy was built to run in dry weather conditions only. The electrical components and computers are not fully waterproofed. Magic Kingdom slowly kills its parades by constantly sending them out in rain. Also, consider all the costume pieces that are dry clean only. When they get drenched in a downpour, colors bleed and fabrics shrink. Now imagine these conditions with the addition of a highly computerized light show running through the various elements. Magic Kingdom is much too concerned with guest satisfaction scores to properly take care of a parade like Paint the Night.
Regarding the Florida parade maintenance team, they are actually a VERY talented team of engineers who put a lot of work into keeping our floats looking great. They get all the money they need to keep everything working and replace worn-out parts. I would actually argue that much more money is put into maintaining the animations and effects in FoF than was ever put into Soundsational. (There were animations that were abandoned.) The rebuilding of the Maleficent float alone is a testament to how dedicated our team is to putting out a good show. That was a lot of money invested into new computer and flame systems, not to mention the fire suppression system that was installed and scrapped before she ever even made her triumphant return. The area where the budget is lacking is in staffing. It is a fairly small crew that is responsible for keeping everything going. Probably the biggest issue, as others have mentioned, is the lack of downtime. Disneyland gets months at a time to rehab their floats. Magic Kingdom has about nine days in December when they run MOUCP during the daytime and unfortunately much of the maintenance team is on vacation.
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