CD/DVD drive no longer works

Hey guys/girls/what have you. Recently I woke up to find that my cd drive no longer works. It has one of my South Park DVDs in it and wasn't showing any signs of potential issues prior to my discovery and it played fine the night before. When I first start the computer it attempts to eject it or something but it seems as if something is preventing it from doing so. If I hit the eject button while the computer is on it'll make a bunch of mechanical noises for about 10-15 seconds and then it'll stop and nothing will come out. Also, the computer doesn't realize there's a disc in there at all and so I can't use it either. I reset the PRAM or whatever it is but that didn't help either. Any ideas or will I have to send the thing to apple?

Thanks in advance,
-Stu

Try holding down the eject button (don't just tap it). Another way is to drag the disk icon to the trash (no, it won't delete your disk) and it will spit it out. If none of those simple things don't work, here's some other ideas:
Also, if any files are still open from the disk, it won't delete until all files are closed. Make sure everything is closed and then hold down (for about 2 secs) the eject button again.
Hope this helps. And btw, welcome to Mac-Forum.

Reboot and hold down the mouse button after the startup chime. Keep the button down and the DVD should eject. If not it sounds like it's stuck.

Thanks! Holding down the mouse button did it!