Actually, Disney has a VERY generous refund policy. You get refunds on everything as long as you give them 48 hours notice.
If that's the case, then they've changed it pretty dramatically in the last couple of years that I've been out of the travel business.
Many moons ago when I first got into the travel biz (twenty-five or so years ago now), theme park tickets were strictly non-refundable, but fully transferable and unused days never expired. Because of this, I encouraged my clients who had multiple kids to always get the longest-length pass possible because if they were going back in a few years as younger kids got older, they would ultimately save money on the park passes, which always go up, never down, in cost. Ergo, if you were going to have two different five-day trips over the course of several years, it made sense to go ahead and buy the ten-day passes now, because the five-day pass would be more expensive four years later when you went back.
Their hotel policy varied by property and date (due to demand), but typically if you just reserved a Disney hotel all by itself (say, the Grand Floridian), they would usually want a one-night deposit, but that was refundable with a 48- to 72-hour cancellation policy. But if you reserved through Disney Travel (later Disney Vacations, and now Magical Vacations), you would typically need a $500 deposit
plus the cost of the theme park tickets at booking and a final payment (remainder of the balance for the hotel stay and any add-ons, such as airline tickets or airport transfers) about 45 days prior to departure, and the cancellation window closed starting on the day of final payment. Different people working through Disney had different, and usually more generous, cancellation policies. FlyAAway Vacations (now American Airlines Vacations) would let you cancel and get a full refund right up to the day of departure if you bought their cancellation waiver ($59 at the time), for example. FunJet had a similar policy.
About seven years or so ago, Disney introduced the "length of stay" pass, and that was refundable subject to the Magical Vacations cancellation policy, but if you got day-specific passes (e.g. a five-day multi-park with park-hopping), those were still non-refundable
and non-transferable (though I'm uncertain how they enforced the non-transferability).
Certainly it's possible that Disney has loosened their policy, but I have to say that I would be rather surprised at it, as this would be a very uncharacteristic move for Disney.
