I have 3 slides. The first never opens or is hidden. It seems to pause for a longer period of time then the 2nd slide moves in, pause then 3rd slide is in view then long pause again and 2nd slide is in view........................
What is going on with 1st slide.
Where do I set height problem to auto?
How do you vary the slide time is that in transition?
How do you add a paragraph next to each slide?
How do you have slide to start small and increase in size as it moves into position?

I deleted it and started over. Working. Now only have following questions.
How do you vary the slide time?
How do you add a paragraph next to each slide?
How do you have slide to start small and increase in size as it moves into position?

What version of FF are you using ? If it is FF 288 (newest) then as Scott indicated you need to go to the first >ul with the class orbit-container and make the adjustment to the Height from 0 to Auto.

On the orbit slideshow there is a stop on hover if you have your mouse over the picture which may play with your slides going from one to the next. You can also adjust the slide time which instructions on how to do it is on Zurb Foundation Orbit documents.

If you slides are out of order I would suspect you may have duplicated a slide to add one ? Each slide has a number assigned to it.

Adding a paragraph along side a picture is possible. The picture and paragraph could be put in a container in each slide.

Basic transitions like fade and slide are available in Orbit. They wanted to keep it simple.

Read up on the documentation on Zurb Foundation and practice. Support for a slideshow can be complicated. Uploading a simple project for us to look at would be ideal otherwise is just a guessing game.

You can adjust the slide time by adding data-timer-delay attribute to the main orbit container. Set the value to 250 for really fast or up to something like 10000 for really slow.
You can put anything you want in each list item slide container. Again, I would add a container, and then put your picture in it with a paragraph.
Additional options are available to add animation such as animate.css. Its starts getting rather complicated though.

Hope this helps....

Just what I needed. I am a simple person so will omit 3 option.
Thanks,