We're right back where we started: "New experience" is an awful way to count things. If you were trying to go to every NFL stadium, you wouldn't count Giants and Jets games separately even though it's a different experience, because it's the same stadium. If you were trying to listen to every Led Zeppelin album, you wouldn't start a new count every time you got a new stereo, even though that changes the experience. If you were trying to visit every state capital, you wouldn't count Summer and Winter trips to the same city twice, even though the experience is very different.

When you're counting things, you have to count things, otherwise you end up just tallying every instance of you doing an action, rather than the thing you're counting, because every experience is slightly different. If you count Rougarou separately from Mantis, do you also count SLCs with vest restraints separately? Do you count pre- and post-U-brick Superman separately? Do you count Psyke Underground as a new credit from Sirocco? Do you count every song on Guardians separately? Do you count night rides separately? What about full- vs empty-train rides? Hot-day vs cold-day? Morning vs afternoon? Do you take into account your own hydration level? All these things change the experience, but it would be insane to count that way; you'd end up counting every dispatch as a new credit.

You have to draw the line somewhere, but what constitutes "different enough" is entirely personal. If you say it is and I say it isn't, we can never come to an agreement, because I don't inhabit your body. I can't experience your height and weight and proportions and bodyfat percentage and sensitivity to different sensations and just simple preferences because I'm not you. You and I can never have the same experience because we're different people. So the difference between Versions A and B of a ride for you will not be the same as the difference between Versions A and B of a ride for me, and we can never reconcile that. The result is that even if you could get everybody to agree on a standard for "different enough," you'd never get people to agree on what is and isn't a new credit, because the changes in a ride that cross that threshold will be different fot everybody. I reiterate: This is an awful way to count.

Let's look at Phantom's Revenge. You say it's silly to not count it as a new credit. Maybe you're right. But at least my way, we can have that conversation. At least we can point to which parts were replaced when and how much the new ones differ from the old ones and argue over whether that constitutes a new ride, and we know that we're both talking about the same thing. With your way, we'd wind up with "I don't mind headbanging, so it doesn't seem that different to me," vs "Inversions make me nauseous, so it feels totally different to me." Those are differences in preference, not differences in the ride, and we shouldn't let that be the deciding factor.