actually what I thought was the right way to automate effects was wrong, so in that case how do you automate effects in reason? (my method only worked for automating parameters of the device)

I haven't done this myself but I'll try to take the leap

If the things you want to automate in Reason are available to midi then you can use a midi track in Protools to achieve this.

However it might be neccessary to make a Reason song with the automation you want contained within
... and the Reason song will track with the ProTools song.