My experience with ARR was different. Talking specifically about 2.0, that is, before Party Finder (which dropped with 2.1). If you wanted to actually watch the cutscenes in the intended way, you'd have to go with a premade with that specific purpose. This could mean different things: You could stand in Mor Dhona shouting for a party, or go in with a group picked from your FC, LSs, friends, or whathaveyou... or you could try your luck with Duty Finder.

Now, once again, this was my experience but... DF was very much a "majority rules" type of scenario. In a lot of those parties I was in, people cared very little about the newbie's experience. At first, they would get pressured into skipping cutscenes, or outright kicked for "gameplay differences" or whatever that default reasoning is. As people got their ilvls up there, and as patches released, it became less of a "skip or kick" deal and more of a "ok, you go ahead and stay there watching your cutscene while we tear through the rest of the instance without you."