Ok, here's the senario: Lets say we are going to stay at Royal Plaza the first week of December. We want to go to see the gingerbread house at the Grand Floridian. How would we get there? Can we take a WDW bus even if we aren't staying at a resort? Is that allowed? Say, we are at Magic Kingdom and want to take a break to go see the gingerbread house . . . could we catch a bus going to the GF or maybe the monorail? Just wondering. I know that the Royal Plaza has it's own busses to take you in and out of the parks . . . just trying to think of a way to see the gingerbread houses if we end up staying there. (this is very important to my father-in-law after seeing them on the Travel Channel)

This was a few years ago, but we were staying on property and had some dinners at other resorts. The only way for us to get there was by monorail or resort bus from one of the parks. No one ever questioned us or asked for our keycards even though we were "legit."
The monorail from the magic kingdom will take you to the GF and back to the MK.

Oh, and make sure to take the monorail marked "resort monorail" from the Magic Kingdom. It will take you past the Polynesian and through the Contemporary as well as the GF.

Yeah, I found out that if you have a multi-day pass, you can take the monorail for free. I guess then, we would take our hotel shuttle to MK and then hop on board the monorail to the GF or maybe the Contemporary for a Chef Mickey breakfast.

Still wondering about the busses . . . I wouldn't want to be caught without the right credentials! ;)

If you have a park hopper you can use the bus between parks, or the boat between Epcot and the Studios. I have never seen them say/do/question/look askance/anything to anyone about using the buses from parks to resorts. If you're doing it to spend money at a resort (i.e., for a meal), I think you are a valid user of the bus transportation - and you could even stretch that to look at the Christmas decorations (don't miss out on those if you stop at the Contemporary - on the first floor), and call it a research trip to see if you'd like to stay there in the future.

Oh, Thank you! That's good information and some very good ideas to validate our use of the transportation! I'm always researching travel for my family and for others. I'd be going on business, technically. ;) Yay, not so many worries any more.