My cylinder follows the curve a quarter of the way then flys off. I could use a mirror modifier to simulate the cylinders going around the top but I am curious what is causing it to follow the curve partially 
Hi Blake,
If an Object has a Curve Modifier on it and it goes 'beyond' the Curve's end points, it gets linearly extrapolated. That is what seems to be happening in your situation, therefore, I conclude that your Curve has a beginning and an end. That is not what you want here; you want a circle.
Now, I haven't taken this Course yet, so I can't tell how you managed this (you probably took a part of the Mesh and Converted that to a Curve), but the fix is simple:
Select the Curve and go into Edit Mode. Then in the N-Panel, check Cyclic U:
I'll eat my hat if that doesn't solve it. Well, I won't actually eat my hat, that won't do you any good, nor me. Instead I'll see what else could be going on, so please let us know if this did the trick or not.
You set me on the right path, when i turn on cyclic it adds this additional line. that line is where 2 vertices overlap. I went back and remade the curve from the duplicated edge and that was a closed loop on its own but for some reason when converting it to a curve it doesnt become a closed loop.
It turns out that the loop made from the mirror modifier each quadrant had overlapping vertices when i converted it to a curve so i had to delete the overlapping point then fill the gap with fill and eventually i was able to complete the loop. Maybe just a nibble on the hat brim but thanks again for putting me on course
Yeah, that's basically a 'double Vertices' problem.
What looks like a Mesh Circle, isn't really a circle, because of, in this case a Mirror Modifier. Maybe a Weld Modifier at the end might also have helped.
Anyway, Kudos for figuring this out, with the sparse information I gave you!