Apparently it went into the testing phase yesterday, and a few lucky tourists were the first to ride it.

The problem is, the damn ride looks like a regular elevator and these hapless tourists had no idea that they were stepping on “Elevator: The Ride”. Harrah’s really needs to mark these things more clearly.

It was a terrifying free fall for people inside an elevator at the Paris hotel-casino Friday. It happened around noon.

Fire officials say four people were inside the elevator on the 30th floor when a cable snapped. The elevator dropped roughly fifteen floors before the brake system kicked in and slowly lowered the people inside to the fourteenth.

Officials say once they secured the elevator, crews went through the shaft, cut through the elevator wall and opened the door to get the passengers out. One 60-year-old woman complained of lower back pain, but was treated at the scene. No one else was injured.

Now, I could make a thousand jokes about how this happened because Harrah’s probably bribed off the elevator inspectors and/or are owned by a group of devil-worshiping anti-Christs … but that may be perceived as negative toward Harrah’s.

And if there is one thing I refuse to be … is negative toward Harrah’s.

They reamed the RJ and stopped selling their papers after remodelgate, so I have to be very, very careful about how I word things or this site is going to get blocked from the Harrah’s very fair and reasonable $15/day wi-fi access.

In all seriousness, I have been stuck in elevators several times in my life. It is one of the inevitabilities of urban living and it is an unpleasant and helpless feeling.

I’ve never fallen though, and I honestly don’t remember hearing of a “cable snapping” in the last twenty or so years. Supposedly the concept is extremely antiquated due to the nature of modern elevators, and has been practically relegated to the”urban myth” category.

Elevator cables simply don’t “snap” anymore.

The way it was explained to me by an Otis (elevator company) guy as he was extracting me from a stuck car about 15 years ago, elevator cables have at least 7 steel strands wrapped around each other. Each one of those strands can support the entire weight of the elevator car plus two thousand pounds.

So let’s say, three cables snap. Well, not to worry, you still have 4 perfectly effective cables still intact. Hell, six of the seven could snap, and you are still fine so long as you are not in a car with Rosie O’Donnel.

Therefore, even though it is Harrah’s, it still stuns the living shit out of me that all of the cables on the car would be broken.

You actually have to make a concerted effort to have every cable on the elevator fail in 2008.

Hell, you had to make an effort to have it happen in 1975.

I realize that it is an isolated incident, and statistically impossible that it will happen a second time … but then again, it was statistically impossible that it would happen in the first place.

How long do you have to go between inspections to realize that every strand of the cable is frayed?

Luckily they were high up and the brakes worked.

Again, though, it was explained to me that the brakes worked in a split second, and would engage immediately in the event of a lift failure, and the elevator would not “fall”. It would just stick where it is.

But the Paris elevator fell 15 floors. That’s not any more normal than a cable snapping. Somebody needs to take the thing to Midas and slap some new brake pads on it. Apparently, nothing really worked as designed. They were just lucky it happened high up.

If the cable had snapped on the 10th floor instead of the 30th, then it could have been a completely different outcome. (10th floor minus 15 floor drop equals negative 5 floors equals “Dude, where’s my spleen?”)

I realize that a replacement cable costs money and the economy is tight, but sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and spend the cash.

Fine, so Harrah’s-bashing is played out and overdone. I don’t completely disagree with that.

But come on, stuff like this is just a double-dog-dare, which I simply can’t ignore. This is just plain lazy and hapless, and if they don’t stop cutting corners someone is going to get hurt.

I think we would all give up the buffet comp to, I don’t know … LIVE through the weekend.

Next time I go to a Harrah’s property, my ass is taking the stairs. Unless they have somehow managed to fuck those up to.

“Breaking: Caesar’s staircase collapses on man who was too afraid to take elevator”