Mrs QNH 1013 did this AOPA course at the end of 2002 and wrote it up in this forum. Unfortunately I'm not skilled enough to put a link in to her thread.
The course was excellent, and the final assessment had her being vectored by D&D (all pre-arranged) back to Coventry, where she was guided back to the circuit by Coventry Radar, followed by a landing.
As I understand it the time can be logged towards a PPL if necessary because it was all done under the same conditions (licenced airfields etc) as a PPL. The only difference was that she was flying from the right seat.
Oddly enough, I was looking through her notebook yesterday and looked at the notes she made for EX 4-10 and was impressed at how thorough they were.
Well worth doing, but like any other training, get a thorough instructor.