It gives you about one second to read the menu choices and then quickly tap the one you want. I suppose if you've memorized all the menus, you might be able to use it. Otherwise, the menu disappears and you are taken immediately to a page.
For example, if you tap Rocket Motors, you get a drop down with Regularly Stocked, Pre-order Only, and two other choices. If you don't tap something immediately, you are taken to a Rocket Motors page. It should not do that, but since it does, what you would expect is to have links on that page in the left navigation for Regularly Stocked, Pre-order Only, and the two other choices. Instead there is what looks like a link to the page you are already on. Well, just now, messing around with it, I found out that is not a link --- it is another cascading menu that will display Regularly Stocked, Pre-order Only, and two other choices and this menu does NOT just disappear.
So I guess that is an alternate way to navigate the site. From a design point of view it does not LOOK like an alternative navigation, so that limits its usefulness. Also it proves that the cascading menus do not NEED to automatically disappear, because the alternate nav doesn't work that way. So why does the primary nav work that way?
Estes used to have this same exact problem, but they fixed it. So it is something the developers can easily fix, and it should not be on the customer to try to just work with it or hope to accidentally discover the secret alternative navigation. The site would just work better and be more successful if it were fixed, and it should not be hard to do.
