I did a very short trip to ACE, out Sat and back Mon. To summarise, disappointing lounge experience at LGW, poor outbound flight but much better inbound flight

Lounge at LGW
Hopefully this will soon be history. I was turned away from the Club Rooms as it was full and taken into the No 1 Lounge where I was "allocated" a seat at a computer table. At least they had decent hot food. I then went to try the ex Virgin lounge as there was a 1 hour delay. I had to wait in a queue to be taken to a seat. The only food was a few sandwiches, a bowl of crisps and some cakes. A women who sat next to me was complaining to me about the lack of champagne, she had also been turned away from Club Rooms and was flying 1st. At least the staff were very professional and pro active.

Outbound flight
I think I put the overall experience down to a poor CSM. There were no menus or hot towels. He made a very cynical announcement about BOB "we will do our best to serve you but many of the items haven't been loaded".

He then announced that the service would not start until we had all had chance to use the toilets and settle down. Drinks came after 45 mins

Next they came out with drinks for the meal, but they wouldn't hand out glasses. Plastic cups were used for juice and water. The meal came 90 mins into the flight. After that (and for the whole flight) nothing was pro actively offered. My call button was ignored twice and a man standing by the curtain pointed out to them that I had pressed the button

Inbound flight
Pretty much what I had expected. Hot towels, menus, service started as soon as the seat belt sign was off. Pro active crew offered top ups and no plastic cups in sight. Overall a nice flight and I felt relieved as I had been thinking the poor outbound was the result of cutbacks