From this I would say you prefer a more "traditional" approach and that's OK (K.I.S.S is good). It's also why CodeIgniter is a great learner's framework. Personally I find CodeIgniter cumbersome to use over time, having to perform a lot of low level programming. So I guess it is a matter of taste.
Of course if you have a bias against ORM then CodeIgniter is the obvious choice; CodeIgniter's Active Record class is like a very basic ORM without any of the complex moving parts (no relation definitions, etc). After using both extensively, I think Laravel offers more leverage with a similar API. I agree with you about the routing, in fact, the administrator tool I am working on now uses a routing system similar to CodeIgniter sitting on top a Laravel route. Again this is because I prefer the traditional approach in this usage case, less flexible yet more predictable.
So it could be a matter of taste and contingent on the application requirements.