People don't say "how'd they do that!?" quite as much as they used to it seems.
The interesting flipside is most people understand how they actually did things less than ever.
If you require people to say more than just "it's cgi" you mean? That seems true.
Well, yeah. Saying "they used CGI" is like saying "they used models" or "they did it for real". It doesn't really explain anything, and is an easy dismissal that makes no acknowledgment of the difficulty and innovation that actually went into the work. With practical effects everyone can relate to manipulating reality, so they have a point of reference when they see something and they can't figure out how it was done. With CG, most people have no idea how the medium works, so it's all the same to them.
I constantly see stuff in CGI that blows my mind, but I have the advantage of having practiced CG (sounds like a cult when I put it like that) for many years, so I have a lot more context than most people.