I agree with your review of this and the other core adventures. I'll go a step further and say that when reading through these modules, I find that they remind me of the old classic adventures from my 1st Edition days.
Thunderpsire Labyrinth already inspires the same sense of excitement that White Plume Mountain once did, and Keep on the Shadowfell, to me is like Keep on the Borderlands. The settings for both of these adventures are excellent, well thought out and plausible.
I'm having more fun running D&D these days than I did when playing
3E, that's a given.