How many times per day do you dream about taking a cruise? Now how many times a day do you Google search “cheap cruises” hoping to fulfil your Carribean or European cruise fantasies? In truth, much fewer travelers are booking cruise vacations through a local travel agent. Instead, they are scrolling the Internet for online travel deals, most often a few months to weeks before they plan to escape on vacation. Just so you know what to look out for, here are a few tips for finding and booking that dream budget cruise:

1. Book way ahead

I know many people don’t want to wait months between planning and taking a cruise vacation. Yet, cheap last-minute cruise deals are pretty few and far between, particularly if you’re fussy about cabin size, cabin location, destination, and itineraries. If you plan to whisk your family of 4 or 5 away on a carribean cruise for the holidays, changes are you’ll face limitations when it comes to all of the above. And if you plan to cruise with a relatively new ship on a specific cruise line, realistically you’ll have to book almost a year in advance. Instead, seek out far out early-bird sales, which most cruise lines offer early and at the best prices. Book ahead and don’t wait until the lowest rates virtually cruise away.

2. Book in shoulder seasons

If you’re dead set on a specific cruise line and destination, the easiest way to save is to travel off season. Now that doesn’t mean you have to take a European cruise during the rainy season, but the book just a little outside of peak season (think October for Carribean cruising or April for Euro cruising to the Mediterranean) and you’ll settle on a cheaper price with slightly lower temperatures.

3. Sign up for invite only travel sites

Cruise Critic, Travelzoo, Rue La, La, Jetsetter, and even Groupon often offer slashed cruise travel prices in flash sales or via invite only offers. For instance, if you’re flexible as far as travel dates, sign up for Rue La La, a site that offers luxury travel at prices cut 50% or more. The only catch is you need to sign up and monitor the offers before you’ll find your dream cruise. Sign up sites like Groupon are great too, just keep in mind that they offer everything from spa packages to car cleaning with the odd cruise mixed in. So patience is the key here, but in many cases you’ll be rewarded if you wait.

4. Email alerts

At the end of the day, most cruise lines would rather fill cabins on a Carribean or European cruise for next to nothing rather than cruise with a partially empty ship. This means, again if your travel dates are a bit flexible, they rely on last minute offers to fill cruise ship cabins to capacity. So go ahead and sign up for email alerts with your favorite cruise lines (i.e., Carnival, Celebrity, Royal Caribbean, Norwegian, etc.) for exclusive deals you’ll only receive via emails.