I'm surprised that both the large group and the PG management even allow the potential for this kind of thing - it is a recipe for problems for all parties, and it CAN be done right...

In 1988 Eva and I were part of a large corporate group (the now-defunct Digital Equipment Corporation, my employer at the time) booked for a week on the Royal Princess for a corporate reward cruise along the Mexican Riviera. To insure a marvelous time for all, Digital bought the entire ship for three back-to-back-to-back weeks, divided the group into thirds (each group sailing for one week), and set the passenger load for each week at approximately 1/2 the ship's normal passenger capacity, leaving approxiamtely 1/2 of the ship's cabins (the less desirable half) empty.

Thus, we had the entire ship to ourselves (just our group) for the week, with almost a 1:1 ratio of staff to guests. It was fabulous for us. If there had been any non-DECies on the ship, they would have probably had a TERRIBLE time, and their experience would have also likely impacted our group's experience (negatively), and the ship's staff's experience (negatively).

In this particular case, I fault the large group (whoever they are) for not anticipating this kind of issue or simply being too cheap to buy out the whole ship, or else having booked the wrong sized ship. I also fault the PG management (whoever they are) for not anticipating that treating any passenger in the Luxury Cruise market as anything less than equally pampered is neither expected nor acceptable.

And for all of you PIPsters, I see you as a very different situation than a "formal" group or corporate group in both scale and demand on the ship's resources and staff - you would have nowhere near the same kind of negative impact IMHO....but then again - I wasn't there. ;)

Just my $0.02 worth...

Cheers,
Ken