After doing a bit of searching, I think I may have solved the problem (although this won't fix it if you are using more than one optical drive).
I edited the /lib/udev/write_cd_rules script file, making the following changes:
link_num=$(find_next_available 'cdrom[0-9]*') <---original
link_num="" <---my version
If you look further down in the script, you will see the following:
Code:
write_rule "$match" "cdrom$link_num" "$comment"
["$ID_CDROM_CD_R" -o "$ID_CDROM_RW" ] && \
Since all I wanted was to have my cdrom, cdrw, dvd, and dvdrw symlinks stay the same (i.e. not have any numbers appended) this works since $link_num is set to nothing. It's a bit hacky, but it's the only solution I've found so far.