No, because you put the parent directory in CDPATH. If I have funstuff/blogs/pics, funstuff/blogs/foods, funstuff/blogs/cats, etc., I put funstuff/blogs in CDPATH and now cd cats just works. If I created a pile of symlinks, I would have to individually create one symlink each for ~/pics, ~/foods, ~/cats, etc. And also type cd ~/cats.
Of course, adding a symlink “~/f” that points to “funstuff” would work around the limitation, at the expense of typing two more characters. Four more if you count the leading “~/”.