passing object ids with link_to_remote

When passing an array of objects in the :url part of link_to_remote like so:

link_to_remote "Edit", :url => {:action => "test", :appts => @objects}

the params[:appts] holds the id's for all the objects in @objects. This is what I want, but I did this by accident by trying to pass the objects themselves. I just wanted to confirm that this is the correct behavior and also I was wondering if it possible to pass all the objects and not have to waste another database query.