A brief explanation of where I'm coming from. First, I've read as much as I could of what people would suggest changing (I've got several threads and blog posts saved as PDFs for reference), and that's even from this site. Even so, this will be my fiance's first Adventure Path. So I'm hoping to really make it special.
Second, my fiance will be soloing it. Unless there's a huuuuge issue with mechanics I'm not overly concerned with them. I've been playing for about fifteen years now (3.5 and on) and I usually make adjustments on the fly if I've over or undertuned something. It's not a question of whether she'll be soloing it. She'll be fine. My only concern is really the story. So if there's any part of the story you think should be jazzed up or could be fleshed out way more, please share your ideas!
Third, I'll be replacing all mention of Serpent Folk with Yaun'ti, cause they were a favorite race of mine back in the day even though I only had a few experiences with them. I've really upped their involvement throughout the game too. With that said, my plans are pretty vague. So if anyone has any ideas on where to expand their roles, all the better!
Ideas I've had?
-The second book has a lot of busy work with several factions. Would be possible to make it a more political thing, with the factions all ending up racing to the ruins for various reasons? Could they be fleshed out enough to make a (not quite wacky) grand race sort of experience?
-Again with the second book, I plan on throwing Yaun'ti into the mix. They're goal is to get to the ruins first, and maybe acquire some mercenary help, but mostly be first. So they'll be stirring the pot too. How best can they do that? (Remember, they are going to be waaay more prevalent then the Serpent Folk apparently are in this path from book 2 on, so not much is too much.)
-There's a part of the path where the players are expected to basically slaughter their way through it and conquer everything. I saw not a few blog posts suggesting both battle and diplomacy being options mixed together, sometimes leaving one to be the obvious choice. One of my hopes was a smaller faction of non-crazed Yaun'ti who have long since moved on from their dead god and evil ways, who want to stop this, and perhaps a neutral faction of said Yaun'ti who are happy with the way things are now but may need to be swayed to assist or at least not hinder my fiance. Could either of these options work in tandem with the conquering and slaughter?
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I think my first advice is to make sure your player is on board with the content of the AP (since she's the only one playing, there's no need to balance her interests with those of the other players), and to make setting and story adjustments according to her interests. Does she like sandboxes, or is she more interested in plot? (In case of the former, you might want to turn RtR into a sandbox where she gets to choose her faction's route to Tazion; in case of the latter, you might want to emphasize the NPC quests in SfSS and the vengeance against Yarzoth a bit more, and add in overarching plot threads to CoSS.)
With regards to your ideas . . .
I think it's fine to replace serpentfolk with Yuan-ti, being cognizant that both are unwittingly antisemitic dogwhistles inspired by pulp fiction. As far as I can tell, serpentfolk are just a more alien version of Yuan-ti, which are a little closer to the lizardfolk trope. If you make psionic yuan-ti with mental manipulation fairly common, and make Yarzoth a pureblood, you don't really need to change anything in the plot as written. Maybe a bit more in the later books, where aapoph-caste serpentfolk (more like the abomination yuan-ti) are very clearly subservient to purecaste (halfblood yuan-ti).
All of the factions technically are racing to Saventh-Yhi for various reasons (Mantis is looking for the mantis blade, Pathfinders want to do archaeology, Free Captains are in it to start a new pirate fleet, Sargava wants to make a territorial claim, and Aspis wants to sell relics for money). There's certainly room to play up the intrigue, though, if that's what you and your player are interested in. If you want to make things more like a Great Race, I'd recommend cutting the faction expeditions, though - give your player a quick-moving team of 5-6 people to help her/that she has to take care of, and assign the other factions a similar group that she can run into every now and again. Maybe have multiple such groups, so you can have repeated encounters if your player wipes out one of the factions' parties?
If the yuan-ti are a faction, and are still generally "evil" and not able to just walk around Eleder freely, they might have agents already worked into Sargava's high society - their expedition might start out as an arm of the Ivory Cross mercenary group, or be financed by Daugustana or General Alban, and then reveal itself to actually be a bunch of snake guys when they actually fight with your player. Maybe replace Mzali with a yuan-ti city, so that that faction gets reinforcements when they enter the Screaming Jungle.
I'm all for moderated depictions of evil species. Making some of the yuan-ti good is one way to do this. You could have purebloods who resent the theocracy and join together with your player to try to overthrow it, for example. Or a group of yuan-ti who have lived in the Ilmurea for thousands of years and want to stop newcomer yuan-ti from the surface from raising Ydersius and destroying their city in the process.