Whey wrote Just as stated above, take it into a game store and they have disc cleaners for laser burn, however the discs can only be cleaned a maximum of three times.

Alternatively you can do the toothpaste method, however you stated that you would not want to be using any method of the sort. You should install the game to the hard drive on your xbox in case of situations like this. This is as if your disc gets laser burn the game will still play if it is being played through your hard drive. This is what I do with my Modern Warfare 2.

The toothpaste method does not work! I have done it 4 times before all on different discs and it's fake.