Special chars in url

[eluser]trumnation[/eluser]
hi, I am trying to send a string to my controller via the url. Before I send it, I encode it to remove special chars, etc. however, the resulting string is full of % signs.

I know % is included in the permitted chars in the config file, but I still am getting the "The URI you submitted has disallowed characters." error. Is there something I am missing here?

Here is an example url:

/mycontroller/submitstr/This+is+a+new+Post+can't+hello!/

Thanks!