I started listening to the SWAN podcast discussing all this, and one of their contributors sat in on the conference call with Disney announcing all of this yesterday. Apparently, this has been "in the works" (meaning Disney buying Lucasfilm) for over a year now, so they really have done a nice job keeping things secret.
I have to say, not that I wasn't still reading/collecting/coming to the forums, but this news has reinvigorated my SW fandom. I was still loving the collecting - and the movies - but just having new movies to look forward to is really cool. It might be great, or it might be horrible, but at least it will be fun to talk about. Like Jeff/Scott/others have mentioned, having kids makes it all the more exciting. We have a daughter, but she's always been way into SW as well, and it will be fun to go through these years of anticipation and experience the new movies together. I'm in the same boat as many here where I vastly prefer the OT, but I still remember what a fun time it was in the waits between the prequel movies - analyzing each little spy pic, leaked detail, etc. in the forums and trying to figure out what was coming next.
This will be so much different as we actually knew the end game for the PT, now it could be anything. I'm fine with them creating something new and not going off of previously written EU stuff. The Zahn trilogy aside, I could take or leave most of it, and haven't actually read a whole lot of it either. I respect those that really have an attachment to it, and understand why it might upset some if it gets "overwritten" like the CW has done - but really, the EU is so huge at this point, it really is impossible to not step on toes there.
I noticed on Mark Hamill's twitter that he posted a congratulations to George for the deal, and said he can't comment on Episode 7 until he gets all the facts. I wonder if they've had at least initial "hey, would you be interested?" discussions with him, or perhaps he is just playing it safe just in case. Either way, and exciting time for Star Wars, and I think that we needed it in some ways.