Not a bad idea to try- the old Yahoo! fallback site had a chat feature ( you had to poke around to find it, not easy ) that was actually easier to use than the main board at Yahoo.
LGF has a chat feature, too, and some swear by it.
Me, my typing and thinking are too slow...
Well the cool thing is the Gabbly feature will still function when FR is down. So u will be staring at a 404 page but the gabbly chat window will be functioning still.