Escaping reserved characters in a query

Hello,

I'm having difficulties escaping reserved characters in an es query

I've tried this and receive 0 total hits.

"query"=> {...
"bool" => {
  "must"=> [
     {"term"=> {"type"=> "iis6" }},
     {"term"=> { "referer"=> "https\:\/\/1234\/donation\/thank\-you" }},
    "range"=> {

.......
....}
However when i chop up the string and do:-

"must"=> [
{"term"=> {"type"=> "iis6"}},
{"term"=> {"referer"=> "1234"}},
{"term"=> {"referer"=> "donation"}}
....
]

I get hits.

Can you please tell me what I'm doing wrong?