I finally called tech support, after everything was back online and asked what happens if you are in the park and the system crashes. The tech support rep explained that the websites are our interface with the Disney computer files and that the outage should not affect the reservations and fastpasses you already have as long as you remember what your travel party was signed up for. We both laughed after I pointed out that I did not believe that the "in park' part of the system was immune from crashes as well. In addition this problem of system maintenance, in my opinion, was not a truthful comment on the part of Disney. System maintenance should be done after hours when the parks is closed. I agree with the previous poster that this is not acceptable in view of the billions Disney makes. It is highly unacceptable for the people that were at their 180 day, 60 day or 30 day windows and trying to schedule something and were forced to guess what time the system would return online.
I would still very much like to hear if anyone on these boards has been in the park and experienced being blocked from accessing or changing fast passes or dinner reservations because the system was down.