Completing "The Ultimate Weapon" has brought the riding maps back. So there is something going on where if you upgrade the way I did, you should have access to those maps until you upgrade to Stormblood.

Anyone having the same issue will have to complete the 7th Umbral Era Quests to get the maps back.

I would imagine the person who wasn't able to see them in HW would either have to upgrade to SB or complete the HW MSQ as well. I can't say for sure.

I can't stress the importance of actually reading and understanding. I repeated myself multiple times on this thread just trying to say what I said in the beginning.

Hardly anyone seemed to understand that the maps were available to me early and were removed.

Thank you to those who offered advice and experiences to make this easier. I really appreciate it. Thank you to the forum for allowing me a place to ask questions. I hope this helps somebody out there understand if they see content disappear in their instance of the game.