Alas that was not the case.
I was at the midnight show of each of the prequels and greeted each with equal enthusiasm despite all the negativity towards them. I remember sitting in the theater for TPM, knowing full well that I was not about to see anything like the OT. It would be the same universe, but different. So I can say that I didn't have half the expectations that most people did. And walking out, I thought the movie was pretty damn good. It was watching it repeatedly on DVD where the movie starts to get lame. It and the other prequels don't hold up after multiple viewings like the OT does.
The PT isn't all bad though. It does have the magic in parts, but overall they fail on many levels. That leads me to believe that Star Wars was never all Lucas. It was him, Kurtz, Kirschner, Kasdan, the actors, etc. There are some truly unwatchable parts in the PT. The romance stuff, the Jar Jar stuff, etc....but there are some truly amazing moments like the end of AOTC (so much foreboding it hurts) or the temptation part in ROTS (Padme and Anakin staring at each other with that creepy music playing - magnificent scene) or lightsaber fight at the end of TPM. The PT HAS the goods....it just needed some adjustments....it needed someone to balance Lucas and his nonsense, that's all.
As for the SEs....I was going through a horrible breakup at the time, so I didn't really pay attention to the changes. I saw them in the theater and knew something wasn't right. It was a few years later when I watched them again that I knew this crap was dead wrong all the way through.