Nemesis is a bit different though as the structure is getting replaced as well. Regardless, I certainly get your point and generally land in the not-a-new-cred camp. There is still a healthy section of track that is remaining untouched. As long as the layout remains the same, then this is more like long-term maintenance similar to what wood coasters have to go through over time.
My point is that Balder is still just a retrack as opposed to large scale structural replacement like Nemesis. Regardless, I don't think either are new creds.
To play devil's advocate, retracking is part of the standard maintenance of a wood coaster. Granted, the design of Balder's track is a little different than a traditional wood coaster so it's a bit more involved and expensive. However, most older wood coasters have more or less gone through full retracks. Even newish coasters like Thunderhead and Voyage have been almost completely retracked. It's just not traditionally done in one fell swoop like Balder.
And I'd go as far to say that if they said "oh wait, your wheels and wing mirrors are actually okay, you can take those with you and knock the price off the new car", it would still be a new car.
That’s fair. Even before I saw your response, I began to think about how flawed my example was. You buy about a bunch of after market parts and bodywork and it’ll drastically change the car, but still be the same car. However, taking a bunch of aftermarket parts made by RMC and applying them to a CCI makes a completely different coaster.
As a stat though it's really about what you want to track, for some people it's just about making the number bigger, for me it's primarily new coaster experiences in terms of the layout, which is why I don't count clones. I also normally don't do kiddy creds, although I did Flying Fish to make Icon my 40th so I'm hardly consistent there.
So to be clear, if a roller coaster:
