Well, it ended up being option 1 (3+ hour delays for both FAR-DEN and DEN-MSN). Because DEN-FAR and FAR-DEN shared the same flight number, the FAR-DEN segment never showed any kind of delay... Unfortunately, when the plane and crew got back to DEN from FAR, they timed out (I'm guessing here...) and the DEN-MSN flight got cancelled.

First available rebooking to MSN is Sunday afternoon. United is really struggling to catch up with weather-related events of the last few days. After a couple of calls and some internet searching, I got her rebooked on DEN-MKE tomorrow evening. Big ^ to the 1K phone agents that made that happen -- I'm pretty sure that they overbooked the flight further to get her on (was only available as Y -- 1 ticket left).