I was fortunate enough to have snagged good quality videos of our last visits to WDW where Spectromagic was still running, so that will be a "nice to have." I'm not a huge parade person, but its sad to hear they've let the thing simply ruin due to inattentiveness. That's a waste of time, money, and resources, even if they never brought back the parade itself. Just so "unDisney."
It appears that the general theme of information surrounding the apparent demise of this particular parade is that the floats were not maintained properly, essentially allowed to ruin/rust beyond repair. I can't help but wonder if this lack of maintenance, which I suspect was discovered some months ago, was all part of the broader issues we've heard of (here and on other boards) that led to the forcing out of the WDW parks president a few weeks (months?) ago? Not saying this issue was a specific cause, but merely another instance of some broader issues indicating managerial neglect.
I mean, we've all heard stories about at least a perception of a drop in park maintenance, food quality at restaurants, customer service, attendance concerns at Epcot, the well-documented DTD problems, so part of me just wonders if the lazy oversight that led to the Spectromagic floats just being wasted/allowed to ruin just isn't another symptom of that broader management failure issue...