Haha, I can imagine. That's so funny because yeah testing the stairs is immediately a red flag, you had to have been like, "We gotta do something about this!"
It makes me think of how the devs of TotK came up with Ascend, they were like it's annoying to try to climb out of these holes, just add a debug thing that let's you essentially teleport out. I could imagine you would do the same thing, off the top of my head you could create a teleporter for each set of stairs that keeps track of how high up you climbed ever and it moves an empty object to keep track of it, so if you happen to fall half way up, you will see a teleporter entrance at the bottom of the stairs that will instantly teleport you back up to the last known height of the stairs you went to, or if you don't care about keeping track of last known height you can just make a trigger at/near the top that opens up the center column of the elevator which is the previously mentioned mancannon or even a simple elevator that just takes you to the top, quickly.
Another suggestion I just thought of but I had thought of it before, the camera should be a little bit delayed/damped behind the player's y axis, that way running up stairs and jumping don't feel too crazy.