Hello from a former Ohioan.
I think you're confusing two different things, Disney's Magical Express and Disney Transport. Both are available exclusively to people staying at a WDW resort. DME is a free bus ride to and from the airport, and Disney Transport is the free buses that take you from your resort to the theme parks, water parks, and Downtown Disney.
DME is free but you must register for it. You will get personalized, bar-coded luggage tags (made of sticky yellow paper) before your trip. You attach them to your CHECKED luggage before you leave home. When the luggage arrives at Orlando's airport (MCO), it won't go out on the baggage claim carousel with the rest of the luggage. Instead, it will be loaded on a truck and shipped directly to your WDW resort, where it will later "magically" appear inside your hotel room (THIS WILL HAPPEN REGARDLESS OF WHAT AIRLINE YOU USED -- IF YOU LAND AT MCO AND HAVE DME TAGS ON YOUR BAGS, YOUR BAGS WILL GO TO YOUR RESORT WITHOUT ANY EFFORT ON YOUR PART). In other words, once you get off the airplane you don't have to go to baggage claim. Instead, you go to the DME counter at MCO and check in. They'll tell you where to get in line for the bus to your resort. The bus may stop at up to a total of 4 resorts. You get dropped off at your resort and then you check in, etc., and begin your Disney vacation.
One day before the sad but inevitable end of your WDW vacation, you'll get a paper in your room telling you the time of your DME pick up to take you back to MCO. If you are flying on a "participating airline," you get the extra perk of checking in for your flight at the hotel (you even get your boarding pass!) AND having your luggage handled for you -- when you check in for your flight in your hotel, you hand over the luggage you want to check, and you won't see it again until it is on the baggage claim carousel at your home airport). If you are using a "non-participating airline," you take your luggage to the DME bus yourself; the driver will load it into the cargo hold, and you will get it back when the bus arrives at the airport, and then you and your luggage check in for your return flight at the airport just like for any other flight you've taken in your life. That's DME in a nutshell.
Disney Transport is the buses that take you from your resort to the parks, and is also free (oh believe me, you paid for it, but you don't have to pay for each ride, if you know what I mean). Each WDW resortl has a bus stop area (the moderates and values have numerous bus stops, one near each village or section). When you're at your WDW resort and you want to go to, for example, Magic Kingdom, you don't have to drive, call a cab, or hitchhike. You just go to the bus stop and look for a bus that says "Magic Kingdom" on the front (wait times for a bus to show up can range from 0 - 20 minutes on average). The bus will drop you off at Magic Kingdom. When you want to go back to your resort, same thing in reverse, you look for the bus stop (and bus) that has your resort's name on it. It's actually a very simple system to use. There are no buses that go from theme park to theme park (except for Animal Kingdom), and there are no buses to take you directly from one resort to another.
There's also monorail and boat info as well, but that only applies to certain resorts and only to certain round trips, so I don't want to overwhelm you, although I may already have.
-- Eric
Just the answer I needed =)
