When I book at CB, I usually make the requests of upper floor and near an elevator since near the lobby isn't a requestable online. About 90% of the time, that gets us what we want. Most of the time when we don't get what we want (they do like to put us near the elevator at the other end of the loooong hallway), they are more than happy to try to get us closer to where we want to be when we check in although sometimes we have to give up the upper floor request to get it. We usually arrive mid-morning so that might help.
If you are set on getting something specific - or if what you want isn't on the list of things you can request when booking online - you can definitely call. Personally, I would call the hotel directly. And yes, when you call the hotel, you are actually talking to someone physically at the hotel.
My best story about room requests was on our last stay at CB. I was in town doing the runDisney Marathon Weekend/Dopey challenge. For those of you that don't know that is a 3.1 mile run, 6.2 mile run, 13.1 mile run and then 26.2 run on subsequent mornings. We were doing split-stay and were transferring to CB after day two so I still has 39.3 miles left to go and my feet were already killing me as I was injured coming into the race weekend. The room that they gave us was at the very end - like the furthest you could possibly get from the lobby without being in the new buildings - and I nearly burst into tears thinking about trying to walk to food court post-race to get something to eat. The TM was sooooo nice when I explained my situation and with a few computer strokes, we were switched to a room that was the second from the elevator to the lobby. It could not have been more perfect and is so indicative of how UO/Loews does things.
