I like the drop down approach, I think you might be a system-wide first to implement drop downs for the menus. Kudos!
Thanks -
How soon before your change goes live?
I'm still seeing unparsed <!-- Menu:Title --> blocks. For an example see the recruiting menu item.
The drop downs were a bit hairy to do because of the way guides are grouped into their own menu block. But by excluding the titles in the list menu items I can create my own set of drop downs.