I love VSD. Here are two site I've made recently using it http://www.matrixlloyd.com/ and http://www.starcrew.org/.

But can I get fun fonts which remain as they originally were when viewed across all browsers and operating systems - other than (boring) arial, tahoma, times new roman, etc ...?

You sure can.
http://progrower.coffeecup.com/customfonts.html

Thanks, Eric.

Works on my iPad, but not on my Android phone...

Looks like using the standard advanced text then is the way to go.