Yea, some people are disappointed; some of the more interesting and exciting moments in physics are when we find out we're wrong, but not always. E.g. I will never forget the time and place I heard about the preliminary detection of primordial B-modes by BICEP (which turned out to be dust contamination) -- that was a predicted detection from canonical inflation models, as the Higgs was a standard prediction from the standard model (also a pretty exciting moment).

Not seeing something when we "expect" to not see anything (from the perspective of certain models) might be more boring, but it's definitely not a "waste" (again speaking purely from a physicist's standpoint).

We know the standard model is incomplete, but where and how are not well known. Not seeing evidence for new physics rules out certain models, and places upper/lower limits on others. It's progress either way.