Our family of five stay was great! The house had plently of space and extra fun things for the kids. Coop nearby and plenty of shops and resturants on the two main streets (one by the house, the other over the tram bridge). Make sure you look at both, we realized the last night an authentic looking English pub was over the tram bridge, too late to go to. Transportation was quick and easy. There is a tram stop and bus stop both within 5 minutes that takes you to East Croyden Train station, which seems to be a major hub to downtown and Gatwick (30 minutes on train to either, no stops in between).
One thing to plan for is transportation cost. For our family it was about £20-25 one way to downtown/airport just for the train. We probably missed something, but this quickly added up. We looked at the Oyster card, but that is only for adults. The last two days we got Day Passes for about £50 total for the 5 of us and those worked well, we certainly "made up" the cost on the Tube/bus/trains:)