Let M be a geometrically finite acylindrical hyperbolic $3$ -manifold and let $M^*$ denote the interior of the convex core of M. We show that any geodesic plane in $M^*$ is either closed or dense, and that there are only countably many closed geodesic planes in $M^*$ . These results were obtained by McMullen, Mohammadi and Oh [Geodesic planes in hyperbolic 3-manifolds. Invent. Math.209 (2017), 425–461; Geodesic planes in the convex core of an acylindrical 3-manifold. Duke Math. J., to appear, Preprint, 2018, arXiv:1802.03853] when M is convex cocompact. As a corollary, we obtain that when M covers an arithmetic hyperbolic $3$ -manifold $M_0$ , the topological behavior of a geodesic plane in $M^*$ is governed by that of the corresponding plane in $M_0$ . We construct a counterexample of this phenomenon when $M_0$ is non-arithmetic.