A while back there was a thread on the Tapestry parades, which I absolutely thought were so beautiful. It was revealed in some of the posts that quite a few of the CM puppet carriers suffered from persistant back problems due to the high center of gravity of the puppets. It will be very hard for someone that doesn't have back problems to understand how this feels, but being a back pain sufferer myself, I guarantee that this would be rough on someone.
I do miss the parade though and I liked Nations better than Dreams.