Clean the lens without takin' it apart? Imposible. You could blow some air into the drive I guess but that probably won't help at all and would just be a waste of compressed air that you could just have inhaled to get high.
It's not that hard... Take a screwdriver, turn left, repeat. And yes, you can contact Sony and then pay to take your time to pack up your PS2 all nice and tidy, personally take it down to the postal office, wait on line, spend 20 minutes trying to decipher the English of the guy behind the counter, then pay 15 bucks and wait two or three weeks for sony to send your PS2 back... But you probably want to just play games now instead.
I'm suprised you guys haven't just opened the shit yet. It's simple and it works fine.