We stayed there in 2003, it's a nice hotel. The room was plenty big enough, and that was for 4 of us (DS's 4 and 2 at the time). We had a veiw towards the airport so could see planes taking off in the distance. We had breakfast in the restaurant and that was ok. We didn't use the pool. The shuttle to the airport seemed quite well organised, we had to book the time we wanted the night before. And the guy on the desk swore blind Virgin flew from the North Terminal and took us there...so we had to get the monorail back to South, so that was annoying.
It is in the middle of nowhere, just over 4 miles from airport, on a duel carriageway.
In order to use twilight check-in we drove the car to Gatwick the night before, and parked it in the car-parking, then got the shuttle back to the hotel. Of course that meant the car was in the car park for one night too many (Doh, didn't think of that!), and we got stung for the extra night when we got back. Not the best welcome home...