The optocht, the grand parade of Carnival in Den Bosch, is a contest. Each entry in the parade has a number, and you send a text message to vote. The floats are impressive, but one of our favorites was the funeral for the blue lion of the Dutch post office bank, which was acquired by ING with the orange lion. No float was involved.
We also went to the parade celebrating the arrival of the prince or intocht. It has its own photo page. Someone also posted a pretty good video of both parades on YouTube. You can read more about our Carnival experience in our blog entry.