Minecraft Realm connects forever to no avail

Whenever I try to join my friend's realm I get stuck on the connecting to realm screen forever, and I know its not frozen because the bars still move the whole time. My friends have no problem joining and we live in the same area. I have researched and found that many others are having this issue and it has not been resolved. I have also tried the following: 

Restart PC, reset router and modem, delete and redownload Minecraft, attempted to connect on 16.0, 16.1, and 16.2.
If someone could please help me with this I'm sure others will greatly appreciate as well.