I also remember not being too unhappy because I couldn't see the Apollo 17 moonwalks (I had exams and anyway they took place when we were asleep and Apollo 16 wasn't so long ago).

It would be interesting to understand the public's motivation towards a manned spaceflight and how relevant should it be. Apollo 11 took place during the summer vacation and this might have helped.
(It did for Apollo-Soyuz).

And then, much more recently, a flight caught the public's attention, even the president went to see the liftoff and I have hours of video footages rather than minutes...The STS 95 flight and John Glenn's return to space. No docking to a space station, no spacewalk, only science the public doesn't care too much about and going up and coming down...Yet it attracted so many more than any other flight since Apollo 11. But we also know this kind of flight doesn't advance the case for humans going up there that much..or does it? Or the public understands those flights are punctual events and it's ok like that?