Speaking of plastic sabers, I'll never forget being at the Tysons Corner Galleria FAO Schwartz a couple weeks before TPM was released and swinging around the Darth Maul saber while a tv monitor there played both trailers on a loop. That's also where I spoiled the ending for myself by flipping through the comic book adaptation but I think I'd already heard about it/figured it out for myself by that point anyway. The spoilers were something I'd follow for the other prequels as well.
Then there was opening day, and I went to go see TPM by myself sometime in the late afternoon passing a friend who'd just seen it as I arrived. The aud wasn't even filled to capacity, but as I left afterwards I remember passing a pretty huge line and seeing yet another friend who was about to see it. It is funny looking back on it now how TPM got hyped only because it was the first Star Wars movie in 16 years and ROTS got hyped because it would be the last ever, leaving nothing to hype AOTC over.
Speaking of which, I remember being at my uncle's house outside of San Francisco in August of '01 when I first read online what the official title of Episode II would be, a very cool moment since I wasn't far from where Star Wars was pretty much born. My uncle had a toy car and he mentioned it was of one of the cars in American Graffiti. Months later I saw Spider-Man on opening night and a kid turned on his green toy lightsaber and waved it in the air at the exact moment that Mary Jane kisses Peter Parker and I yelled "only 2 weeks to go!" amidst the other yells of the crowd. The morning of the 16th there was a story on the radio about how people were planning on skipping work to go see AOTC, and indeed I cut class with a bunch of friends to see it at the union station amc theater. I must've been pretty bored that summer because I went back to see it multiple times, unfortunately not once in digital projection no thanks to scooby-doo.
That last year before ROTS was pretty good. The lack of an OOT dvd didn't bother me to anywhere near the extent that it bothers me now, and besides I remember a lot of people picking up that boxset anyway. A friend and I watched Star Wars on his 60 inch widescreen in component video and 5.1 surround (I'd already read about the soundtrack screwup and yea, it was definitely noticeable. The Lars Homestead scenes come to mind). We were blown away by the picture resolution right from that opening scuffle aboard the Tantive IV. We just weren't used to it looking that clear! It was cool to once again hear Luke mention the Clone Wars now that we'd seen it for ourselves. The next month was the ROTS teaser, timely in its use of that very same digitally restored footage. The trailer in March blew me away.
I could go on and on and on about this, but I'll just close by saying that it was a blast seeing ROTS at midnight with another group of friends. Before the show started, I noticed someone in the audience watching the original version of Empire in widescreen on his laptop! I'd already known that fan preservations existed, but that was another thing that eventually led me to this very site.