While playing casually, I decided to see what the game looks like with special effects turned off and learned that the game locks the camera during the Tomahna elevator, but you can only pause when special effects are enabled.

So I wondered what would happen if I disabled special effects while the elevator is moving.

Turns out it skips the animation entirely.

Turning off/on water effects or depth of field effect has the same effect of skipping the Tomahna elevator rides, so you can keep special immersive effects on and skip both rides. And allegedly the change doesn't actually take effect. (Credit to Jaffra)