Wow, dedley! Did you seriously just call them scrooges after delivering one of the most epic rants about free stuff I've ever heard? Ebenezer himself didn't even complain about free stuff.
I would like to make a minor correction to your post - actually no, to the entire premise of your post. I have never, NEVER spent a single diamond on any event and I have the maximum level on the Thalos, Grand Bridge, and "so many others before". If you read through forums, you'll see people running the statistics and coming up with numbers like 98% probability of getting all the levels without spending diamonds. In fact, I usually end up with an extra upgrade that I end up throwing away.
So if you are indeed spending "massive amounts" of diamonds to upgrade these, you're doing something wrong. Oh wait, I read your post again and you said you've been skipping these events. So you don't actually know that those upgrades were possible, because you didn't actually try. Never mind. Carry on.
Thanks Inno for putting the work into providing more cool content. You guys do a great job!