To give you a flip side perspective, I was in the honors program at a small liberal arts college and I didn’t think it was worth it. I was required to be in the honors program because of my scholarship, but the only things I thought were beneficial were the pre-freshman summer discussion forums with other honors students at my college and our consortia colleges and the early registration (IIRC we registered one day early? but I don’t remember).
Small class sizes - it was an LAC; all of my classes were small.
Special classes - nah. There were some designated “honors” classes, but there were a lot of different ways to get into them, including simply talking to the professor ahead of time.
Motivated peers - nah, all of my peers were pretty equally motivated. It was kind of hard to remember who was in honors and who wasn’t, especially by the end of sophomore year.
Honors housing - the honors residence hall had pros and cons. On the one hand, it had air conditioning (not all of them did) and was newer, and we shared bathrooms with fewer people (10 people instead of about 30). On the other hand, it was mixed-level housing - all of the honors students were housed together. I would’ve rather been in a full freshman dorm, because our freshman dorms were like mini-social organizations with special Greek letters and colors and hand signals and calls and stuff! Alumnae come back to reunions 10 to 20 years later and have a special bond with the other alumnae who may have lived in their dorm in a completely different time period because of the history and traditions. Because our dorms were newer, we don’t really have that - I was the first class of freshman to live in the dorm I lived in. (Although maybe when I go to my 10-year reunion in 2018, there’ll be more people who have by then!)
So I’ll just echo everyone else and say it depends on the school! At some schools it’s a really great opportunity and at others it may not be worth the additional effort.