Believe it or not, one of my fondest memories was looking forward to FotR for 2 years, actually, one of the fondest memories would be always having a LotR movie to look forward to for 5 years.
Another good memory was sitting in the theater until the end of the credits & seeing all the drawings of the cast done by John Howe & Allan Lee (I'm guessing it was them at least
) for the first time.
Maybe my fondest moment was watching RotK for the first time, when I realized it was quite possibly the last time in quite awhile I'd see an LotR movie without knowing what was going to happen. I enjoyed RotK some much that time, it was just awesome
.