Making the auto-hidden menu bar show up faster
There appears to be no easy way to do this.

In previous versions of OS X, the preference com.apple.springing.delay controlled these timings, but setting this no longer affects the menu timeout on Yosemite (at least not for me).

The keyboard shortcut Ctrl - Fn - F2 pulls down the menubar immediately and focusses it so you can use the keyboard to select menu items (e.g. then press E to select the Edit menu; hit 'Enter' to pull down the menu, then press F to select Find, and Enter to activate). Switching to keyboard shortcuts can improve productivity because your mouse can then stay with the action in the middle of the screen.

Alternatively, commercial software Moom should do what you want.