For anyone out that may use this thread as a reference in the future I've listed a few notes that may save you some time:

1. Dropdown box titles must be less than 10 characters.
2. The call function mdContentControlDropDownBox also works on wdContentControlComboBox
3. You can emphasize to users that text needs to be changed by changing the default content control color and wording (i.e. make "Choose an item." a red font, while the fill in options utilize black font)
4. In a separate section Macropod identified how to appropriately connect too long a line using " & _ , but I bring it up again because that fixed the issue and I didn't see many references to that online.
5. If your new, like me, plan to make mistakes or get used to seeing VBA highlight an error.

Also if I could do it so can you, just follow Macropod's advice.