I just got back from 6 months at the Goenka center in North Fork doing long term service. I sat five ten-day courses while there, and served on 6 courses, plus a children's course

I would pretty much agree with what's been said:
pros:
good environment.
good discipline that keeps away the lazy space cadet types.
Teaching is excellent for a new student (but declines from there since you pretty much have to take the same beginner's ten day over and over again).
Donation only - Dana!
All over the world!
Not watered down western style - real Burmese flavor.
cons: some people don't like his chanting (way off key).
Sectarian (in the sense that part of the teaching is to "find a technique and marry it." They don't insist that it should be this technique, but whatever technique/teacher works for you - marry that one and don't be promiscuous. I think this comes from Goenka's Indian culture of gurus and arranged marriages having been met by the influx of uncontrolled lsd dropping freelove hippies who came to his early courses.)
Because the teachers and managers are all volunteers, it changes from course to course, and there is a lot of variance. Some are good, some not so good. Total crapshoot. For the most part, I found the assistant teachers to be unhelpful.
10 day retreats are the max you can do for the first 2 years of practice. Then, you can do 20 day retreats (but ONLY if you tell them that you only practice in the tradition of S.N. Goenka and no other practices whatsoever). Still, you must wait another few months before you can do a 30 day retreat, and the 45 day and 60 day retreats are very rare and hard to get into. Nothing longer than that.
Also, the 10 day retreat is repeated over and over and over and over and over again. It gets old.
One note that's important: It's not that the "teachers" are unhelpful. The "teacher" is S.N. Goenka. He's pretty helpful. Unfortunately, he's not there. It's the "assistant teachers" who are often unhelpful.
My advice to make the best out of it is simple: go and practice exactly as your taught (the core of the teaching is very sound), put your heart into it. Don't have any expectation that the assistant teachers will help you (and if they do, consider it a bonus!) Read Daniel Ingram's "General Advice for Retreats" on his website.
You can get a lot out of it. And mostly, the cons that I listed can be ignored or worked around.
If Goenka was the only access to dhamma that I had - I would still feel 1000000% grateful. Dhamma is dhamma, and Dhamma is wonderful! What magnificent karma we have that we live in a world with so much access to the Dhamma. Incredible! The only reason I'm moving on is because for whatever incredible karmic reason... there are even better places to practice! How cool is that?!
Be happy.