[SOLVED] I'm Missing Something... Menu Functionality Seems Less, not More, vs. older

I've just upgraded from WP 2.9/Atahualpa 3.49 (?) to current 3.x/3.53. (My site was hacked, so it's a total rebuild, not a straight upgrade.) In the past, I was able to do the following things that I can't seem to do anymore:
- Have the menu text spread out horizontally, not go to multi-line mode and be all cramped up
- Have a top-level item with no content on the page have no response, not simply point back to itself

When I try to use the WP3 menus, I get no dropdowns at all for second-level menus. I am using only one menu set (not category menus) for a page-only (no posts) site.

Ideally, I'd like to do the following:
- Use the WP3 menus, since that seems recommended (and I like the fact that the menu text can be something other than the page title)
- Have multi-level menus -- i.e., show the subpages (as defined on Page Attributes --> Parent)
- Have the three- and four-word items be just a single line rather than wrapped.

I'm sure this is easy, and I'm just missing something. But I've wrestled with it for a couple of hours and searched the forums and come up empty.

I'd appreciate a pointer to the right way to do this. I know it's got to be easy... I think...