RedBaron,
In reading through this thread, I think there may have been crossed connections about your resort choice.
In your original post, you'd mentioned that because of your mother, you were considering going back to POFQ, and not CBR as you had decided on.
When Jimbo replied, I think he was thinking of Coronado Springs Resort and not Caribbean Beach Resort...
At Caribbean Beach, there are NO hotel rooms attached to the main building. "Preferred" rooms are rooms in the 6 buildings adjacent to Old Port Royale, which is where the food court is. It's all three buildings of Trinidad North (Buildings 31, 32 and 33), as well as three of the six buildings of Martinique (buildings 24,25 and 26).
One thing to keep in mind that all buildings at Caribbean Beach have two floors, and there are no elevators. So if stairs are a problem, you'd have to request a first-floor room.
You can see a map of the CBR here at AllEars:
http://www.allearsnet.com/acc/cbrmap2.jpg
At Coronado Springs, there are no "preferred" rooms. You pay by view, either standard or water view. But it's true that rooms in the Casitas 1 building connect directly to the main building "El Centro", though not entirely indoors (there's covered walkway along part of it, I believe)
One other thing to take into consideration is that the rooms at Caribbean Beach are slightly larger than standard rooms in all of the other Moderates (340 sq feet vs. 314 sq feet)
I've stayed at Caribbean Beach three times before. Twice, we were able to get a room in Building 25. I feel this is the best building of Martinique, though this was before it was deemed "Preferred", so we were just paying the regular rate. The third time, we were assigned a room in Jamaica 45, which along with Aruba 51 is the closest building to Old Port Royale of the villages across the lake. (Fastest route is via the island in the middle of the lake). It really wasn't that bad of a walk, and in fact Building 45 is closer to OPR than some of Buildings 32 and 33, which are preferred rooms...
-Rob