I am planing on making decorated sugar cookies for the neighbors this year for christmas, but I do not like the taste of royal icing, is there a better tasting icing that I can use that gets hard like royal icing but also taste good?

I have used this one several times in the past:

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/sugar-cookie-icing/

Also, you can use fondant or rolled buttercream.
 

I use Toba Garrett's Glace:  http://cakecentral.com/a/toba-garretts-glace-icing

Tastes good and easy to work with. Hope that helps. 

AKaren's Cookies has a recipe for meringue powder buttercream that is yummy. It doesn't dry rock hard like royal icing but hard enough that you can still stack the cookies. http://www.karenscookies.net/Cookie-Decorating-Video-Making-Icing_ep_94-1.html