I too have hit limits of what Laravel does, but for me this is actually a good thing. I think Laravel handles most of the drudge work and then leaves things open for me to do business/app-specific things my own way.

Of course this is subjective, as everyone draws the line of "how much do I want my libraries/framework to do for me vs. how much do I want to do myself" in a different place.

I've had the opposite reaction to Yii/Laravel. Coming from a heavy .NET/Java background that utilizes similar architecture patterns, it was quite easy to wrap my head around. When you get used to the IoC/Service Provider architecture you realize you can extend (mostly) any part of the framework to do whatever you want.